of 

A 
016*0 


I 


224  West  Broadwa 
Glendale,  Calif.  912( 
244-0828 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 


pASADENA  HOME  FOR  fHE  /w. 

The  Ways  of  the  Gods 

by 

Algernon  Sidney  Crapsey 

Author  of  "Religion  and  Politics," 

"The  Rise  of  The  Working  Class," 

and  other  books. 


THE  INTERNATIONAL  PRESS 

150  Lafayette  Street,  New  York 
MCMXXI 


Copyright,   1921, 
by  A.  S.  CRAPSEY 

New  York 
All  rights  of  translation  reserved 


Second  Edition 


TO 

THE    MEMORY   OF 

ADELAIDE  CRAPSEY 

SCHOLAR  AND  POET 

Who,  being  dead,  yet  speaketh 

NIGHT  WINDS 

The  old, 

Old    winds    that    blew, 

When  chaos  was,  what   do 

They  tell  the  clattered  trees  that  I 

Should   weep? 


ROMA    JETERNA 

The   sun 

Is    warm    to-day, 

O   Romulus,  and  on 

Thine  olden   Palatine  the   birds 

Still    sing-. 


THE  GRAND  CANYON 

By    Zcusl 

Shout   word   of   this 

To   the   eldest   dead!   Titans, 

Gods,  Heroes,  come  who  have  once  more 

A  home! 


AUTHOR'S   NOTE 

The  Author  in  sending  this  book  to  press  does  so  with  a 
deep  sense  of  obligation  to  Dr.  Nathaniel  Schmidt,  Professor 
of  Semitic  Languages  at  Cornell  University,  for  his  careful 
and  corrective  reading  of  the  manuscript,  which  is  greatly 
improved  by  his  critical  chastisement.  This  labor  of  love 
does  not,  however,  involve  his  learned  friend  in  any  respon- 
sibility as  to  the  accuracy  or  sanity  of  his  book.  That 
responsibility  belongs  to  the  writer  alone. 

As  the  book  is  not  an  abstract  treatise  in  theology,  philos- 
ophy, or  history,  but  is  rather  a  relation  of  the  Author's  per- 
sonal intellectual  and  religious  experiences,  he  (for  greater 
simplicity  and  directness)  when  speaking  of  himself  has  used 
the  personal  pronoun  I. 


ADVICE  TO  READER 

Read  one  chapter  at  a  sitting,  preferably  aloud,  and  so  taste  the 
language;  when  you  have  in  this  way  finished  a  book,  then  re-read 
that  book,  silently,  with  the  mind  and  so  master  the  thought;  when 
you  have  in  this  manner  gone  through  the  volume  then  re-read  as  a 
whole  and  so  make  the  book  your  own. 

->  ~' 


NOTE  TO  SECOND  PRINTING. 

The  author  takes  advantage  of  this  second  issue  of  his  book 
to  express  his  high  appreciation  of  the  reception  of  his  work 
by  the  Press  of  the  country.  He  is  especially  indebted  to  Mr. 
Coblentz  of  The  New  York  Herald  and  to  Mr.  Gore  of  The 
Detroit  News  for  the  full  and  lucid  presentation  of  the  nature 
and  purpose  of  the  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  to  their  readers.  He 
wishes  especially  to  acknowledge  his  obligation  to  Professor 
D.  S.  Muzzey  of  Columbia  University  for  calling  atten- 
tion, in  his  exhaustive  and  illuminating  review  published  in 
the  November  Standard,  to  certain  errors  which  have  escaped 
the  eyes  of  the  various  readers  of  manuscripts  and  proof 
sheets.  These  errors  were  made  known  after  the  printing 
of  the  pages  of  the  present  issue. 

In  one  of  these  errors  the  author  has  confused  the  number 
of  the  year  with  that  of  the  century.  On  page  374  the  date 
should  be  1304  instead  of  1404.  On  page  316  the  date  of  the 
fall  of  Constantinople  should  be  1453  instead  of  1483.  In  giv- 
ing on  page  271  the  year  476  as  the  time  when  the  Roman 
empire  ceased  to  exist,  the  author  had  in  mind  the  empire 
of  the  West  of  which  Rome  was  the  capital,  not  the  empire 
of  the  East  of  which  Constantinople  was  the  seat  of  gov- 
ernment. As  the  book  clearly  sets  forth  the  Eastern  Empire, 
which  was  in  reality  not  Roman  but  Byzantine,  lingered  on 
in  shameful  existence  for  a  thousand  years  when  it,  in  turn, 
ceased  to  exist  with  the  fall  of  Constantinople  in  1453. 

Other  errors  to  which  the  Professor  calls  attention,  if  they 
be  errors,  are  errors  of  judgment  and  not  of  fact.  Of  such  the 
critic  is  kind  enough  to  say  that  they  are  slight  blemishes,  in 
no  way  affecting  the  general  accuracy  and  value  of  the  book. 
No  author  could  wish  for  a  kinder  fate  than  to  come  under  the 
knife  of  the  learned,  genial,  kindly,  just  Professor  Muzzey. 

The  critic  in  The  Nation  charges  that  the  author  has  not 
quite  established  his  theses.  He  says,  Symbolize  your  God  if 
you  will  by  an  algebraic  formula  in  which  economic  conditions 
are  fully  represented,  there  will  always  remain  in  your  formula 
the  unknown  quantity  X.  The  author  is  indebted  to  his  critic 


for  giving  him  the  opportunity  of  making  clear  that  the  prin- 
ciple of  economic  determinism  does  not  and  cannot  account  for 
the  Divine  Principle,  but  only  for  its  manifestations.  It  does 
not  pretend  to  eliminate  the  unknown  X,  but  only  to  tell  how 
the  unknown  X  has  been  transformed  into  known  Xes  by  the 
various  generations  of  men. 

To  the  reader  who  doubted  the  statement  that  there  are 
eleven  thousand  rooms  in  the  Vatican,  the  author  has  to  say  that 
his  doubt  is  well  founded.  Eleven  thousand  seems  to  be  a 
popular  phrase  in  Italy  and  other  Catholic  countries  for  a  large 
but  indefinite  number — as  for  instance  the  Eleven  Thousand 
Martyred  Virgins. — The  author  does  not  know  how  many 
rooms  there  are  in  the  Vatican,  nor  how  many  martyred 
virgins  there  were;  but  he  knows  that  in  either  case  there 
were  what  "Lo  the  poor  Indian"  would  call  a  heap  rooms — 
a  heap  virgins. 

The  author  is  far  from  claiming  infallibility  or  finality  for 
his  book.  All  that  he  has  claimed  or  tried  to  do  is  to  give  his 
readers  a  clue  by  which  they  can  find  their  way  through  the 
mazes  of  the  religious  history  of  the  Western  World. 

THE  AUTHOR. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 


AUTHOR'S   NOTE    xi 

PROEM   xiii 

BOOK  I.    THE  GODS  OF  THE  HOUSE   xix 

I    THE  GODS  OF  THE  HOUSE  i 

II    THE  MANES    5 

III  THE  LARES    10 

IV  THE  PENATES   16 

V    NEW  GODS  FOR  OLD  19 

BOOK  II.    GODS  OF  THE  GREEK  DYNASTY  23 

VI     THE  GOD  OF  SPACE   25 

VII    THE  GOD  OF  TIME   31 

VIII    THE  CITY  GOD   35 

IX    THE  GODS  OF  THE  LEISURE  CLASS   40 

X    THE  TWOFOLD  DESTINY  OF  ZEUS  45 

XI    ATHENA  :  GODDESS  OF  THE  IMPLICIT  REASON  49 

XII     PHCEBUS  APOLLO:  THE  GOD  OF  THE  EXPLICIT  REASON..  54 

XIII  APHRODITE  :  GODDESS  OF  DESIRE  59 

XIV  ARES  :  THE  GOD  OF  WAR  65 

XV    DEMETER  :  THE  MOTHER  OF  SORROWS   68 

XVI    HADES  :  GOD  OF  THE  DEAD   73 

XVII     DIONYSUS  :   GOD  OF   MADNESS    77 

XVIII    THE  FALL  OF  THE  GREEK   DYNASTY    81 

BOOK  III.    THE  ROMAN  GOD  85 

XIX    Divus  CESAR  :  GOD  OF  THE  ORGANIZATION 87 

BOOK  IV.    THE  HEBREW  GODS  95 

XX    RISE  OF  THE  SEMITIC  DYNASTY  97 

XXI     THE   WAR   GOD   OF   BENE-!SRAEL 104 

XXII    JEHOVAH  :  THE  FRIEND  GOD  OF  ABRAHAM    108 

XXIII  THE  BARGAIN  GOD  OF  JACOB  112 

XXIV  THE  GOD  OF  THE  WORKING  CLASS   117 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


PACE 


XXV     THE  TENT  GOD  OF  BENE-!SRAEL 123 

XXVI    JEHOVAH    THE   RIGHTEOUS    128 

XXVII    THE  GOD  OF  THE  TEMPLE,  JEHOVAH  THE  HOLY  134 

XXVIII    THE  GOD  OF  THE  BOOK  139 

XXIX    THE   GOD  OF  INSPIRATION    144 

XXX    JEHOVAH:  CREATOR  OF  HEAVEN  AND  EARTH   150 

BOOK  V.  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  GODS  155 

XXXI    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  GODS   i5/ 

BOOK  VI.    THE  GOD  CHRISTUS   165 

XXXII    A  NEW  GOD  COMES  TO  ROME  167 

XXXIII  JESUS    AND   THE    RESURRECTION    172 

XXXIV  THE  MAGDALENE  TRADITION  175 

XXXV    THE  PETRINE  TRADITION 181 

XXXVI  THE  CHARACTER  OF  PETER  182 

XXXVII  PETER  PROCLAIMED  JESUS  MESSIAH  184 

XXXVIII    PETER  DENIES  JESUS   187 

XXXIX    PETER'S  FLIGHT  IN  DESPAIR    189 

XL    PETER'S  RETURN  IN  JOY   191 

XLI    PSYCHIC  PROJECTION   192 

XLII    THE  RESURRECTION  OF  THE  DEAD  194 

XLIII    CHRISTUS,  THE  WAR  GOD  OF  THE  SPIRITUAL  ISRAEL 198 

XLIV    CHRISTUS,  THE  TENT  GOD  OF  THE  SPIRITUAL  ISRAEL 202 

XLV    CHRISTUS,  THE  SON  OF  JEHOVAH  THE  RIGHTEOUS   208 

XLVI    CHRISTUS,  THE  SON  OF  THE  HOLY  ONE  OF  ISRAEL  .. 213 

XLVII    THE  WORSHIP  OF  CHRISTUS  IN  THE  PRIMITIVE  CHURCH  218 

BOOK  VII.    THE  GODS  OF  THE  GREEK  DIALECTIC  225 

XLVIII    THE  GODS  OF  THE  GREEK  DIALETIC  227 

XLIX    THE  COMING  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE  230 

L    CHRISTUS,  THE  SON  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE  237 

LI    THE  DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  CHRISTUS,  SON  OF  THE 

ABSOLUTE    242 

BOOK  VIII.    GODS  OF  THE  LATIN  LAWYERS  249 

LII    THE  CELESTIAL  CESAR   251 

LIII    GOD  ALMIGHTY  :  CREATOR  OF  HEAVEN  AND  HELL 256 

LIV    THE  WRATH  OF  GOD  263 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


XI 

PAGE 


BOOK  IX.    THE  MEDIEVAL  GODS   269 

LV    THE  ECLIPSE  OF  CHRISTUS    271 

LVI    MARY  :  THE  GODDESS  OF  CONSOLATION  278 

LVII    THE  EXPLOITATION  OF  THE  GODS  285 

LVIII    JOSEPH  COMES  TO  HIS  OWN  291 

LIX    THE  GODS  BREAK  LOOSE  296 

BOOK  X.     GODS  OF  THE  MODERN  WORLD  303 

LX    The  DISRUPTION  OF  PROTESTANTISM   305 

LXI    THE  CRYSTALLIZATION  OF  CATHOLICISM   311 

LXII    THE  RETURN  OF  PAN  316 

LXIII    THE  VISION  OF  THE  INFINITE   318 

LXIV    THE  VISION  OF  THE  ETERNAL   323 

LXV    THE  MAKING  OF  MAN   326 

LXVI    THE  GOD  OF  THE  MACHINE   332 

LXVII    THE  GOD  OF  THE  MARKET  339 

LXVIII    THE  GOD  HUMANUS   349 

LXIX    THE  SERVICE  OF  GOD   359 

LXX    THE  DAY  OF  JUDGMENT 368 


PROEM 

It  came  to  pass  many  years  ago  that,  in  the  course  of 
my  travels  in  Italy,  I  chanced  to  be  in  the  City  of  Flor- 
ence of  a  Sunday.  I  rose  betimes  in  the  morning  and  made 
my  way  to  the  Duomo,  Santa  Maria  del  Fiore,  that  I  might 
join  with  the  people  of  the  city  in  their  customary  acts 
of  worship,  and  at  the  same  time  steep  my  soul  in  the  mem- 
ories of  Savonarola. 

When  I  reached  the  Piazza,  del  Duomo  the  day  was  dawn- 
ing. That,  to  me,  most  wonderful  of  city  squares  was  con- 
secrated by  the  morning  light.  The  great  cathedral,  with 
its  blocks  of  alternate  black  and  white  marble,  was  unlike 
any  other  church  I  had  seen  in  the  world.  Embodying  the 
combined  genius  of  Arnolfo  di  Cambio  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  and  of  Brunelleschi,  of  the  fifteenth,  its  history  was 
the  story  of  the  transition  from  Gothic  architecture  to  that 
of  the  Renaissance.  Brunelleschi's  dome  of  the  Duomo 
in  Florence  inspired  Michaelangelo  to  hang  in  the  sky  of 
Rome  the  more  wonderful  dome  of  St.  Peter's. 

But  while  I  reverenced  the  sublimity  of  the  Duomo  and 
greatly  admired  the  Baptistery,  with  its  bronze  doors  by 
Ghiberti,  I  fell  in  love  at  first  sight  with  the  Campanile  of 
Giotto.  This  dream  of  form  and  color,  seen  for  the  first  time 
in  the  holy  hour  of  dawn,  inspired  my  soul  with  sensations 
of  delight  that  were  painful  in  their  intensity.  As  I  stood 
in  silent  worship  before  this  product  of  human  genius,  it 
seemed  to  me  a  thing  of  life.  It  was  the  soul  of  the  artist 
immortalized, — Giotto  existent  in  his  work!  So  lost  was  I 
in  admiration  of  this  bell-tower  that  I  forgot  for  the  time 
why  it  was  that  I  had  come  to  the  Piazza,  del  Duomo  at  this 
early  hour  in  the  morning. 

I  was  reminded  of  my  purpose  by  the  chiming  of  the  bells 
calling  the  people  to  worship. 

xiii 


xiv  PROEM 

When  I  entered  the  interior  of  the  Cathedral  it  was  dark 
and  empty.  I  stood  for  some  moments  in  that  gloomy  void 
and  peopled  it  with  sharp-faced  Florentines,  who  crowded  its 
floor  space  and  climbed  into  its  window  niches,  on  such  a 
morning  as  this  in  the  year  of  the  plague,  1497,  to  listen  to 
the  preaching  of  Fra  Girolamo  Savonarola,  of  the  Order  of 
St.  Dominic, — at  that  time  the  ruler  of  Florence.  How  quiet 
was  this  house  of  God  on  the  day  of  my  visitation  in  contrast 
with  the  stress  and  the  storm  of  those  ages  of  Faith ! — Then 
the  God  of  this  church  was  alive,  and  the  voice  of  His  prophet 
was  heard  in  His  house.  Now  the  God  of  this  Church  was 
a-dying,  His  house  was  forsaken,  and  His  prophets  were  silent. 
There  was  no  open  vision. 

As  I  walked  through  the  wide  spaces  of  the  Cathedral 
I  saw  little  clusters  of  people,  mostly  women,  kneeling  at  the 
various  side  altars  where  priests  were  celebrating  the  mys- 
teries of  the  church.  One  of  these  altars  seemed  more 
popular  than  the  others ;  it  attracted  a  larger  number  of  wor- 
shippers, many  of  whom  were  men.  Being  of  a  democratic 
turn  of  mind,  with  a  desire  to  belong,  if  possible,  to  the 
majority,  I  joined  myself  to  this  greater  company. 

At  first  I  thought  it  was  the  priest  who  gave  interest  to 
this  altar.  He  was  an  aged  man  of  benign  countenance,  who, 
having  spent  his  days  in  prayer  and  meditation,  radiated 
holiness,  blessing  all  who  came  within  the  sphere  of  his 
influence.  But  on  looking  from  the  face  of  the  priest  to  the 
face  of  the  altar  I  found  another,  and  to  my  mind,  a  more 
cogent  reason  why  this  altar  was  more  popular  with  the 
people,  and  especially  with  men,  than  any  other  altar  in  the 
Cathedral.  My  eyes,  lifted  to  the  facade  of  the  baldachin  over 
the  altar,  read  in  letters  of  gold  the  words:  "Ite  ad  Joseph;" 
and  on  reflection  I  concluded  that  it  was  not  the  priest  but 
the  divinity  that  gave  popularity  to  this  shrine.  For  of  all 
the  divinities  whose  altars  to-day  crowd  the  Catholic  churches 
of  Europe,  none  is  more  popular  than  St.  Joseph. 

As  I  knelt  before  this  altar  in  the  Duomo  of  Florence,  I 
recalled  that  in  other  churches  in  Europe  I  had  seen  the  same 


PROEM  xv 

evidence  of  this  saint's  favor  with  the  people  that  greeted  me 
here.  As,  for  instance,  in  the  Church  of  Saint  Roche  in  Paris, 
the  most  fashionable  and  active  of  all  the  churches  in  that 
city,  the  Chapel  of  St.  Joseph  was  more  rich  in  votive  tablets 
than  any  other  chapel  in  the  church,  not  even  excepting  that 
of  the  Blessed  Virgin.  On  these  votive  tablets  the  powers 
of  God,  in  all  their  fulness,  were  ascribed  to  St.  Joseph.  One 
tablet  thanks  St.  Joseph  for  saving  the  giver  from  ship- 
wreck, another  for  the  delivering  from  sickness;  a  mother  is 
thankful  to  Joseph  for  raising  her  daughter  from  the  bed  of 
death ;  a  father  for  bringing  his  son  home  from  the  wars. 
Whatever  a  people  might  expect  from  its  God  that,  accord- 
ing to  votive  tablets  in  his  chapel  in  the  Church  of  Saint 
Roche,  the  people  of  Paris  had  received  from  St.  Joseph. 

When  Mass  was  celebrated  in  St.  Joseph's  chapel,  the  other 
chapels  seemed  deserted  in  comparison.  Mary,  his  betrothed 
wife,  did  not  seem  to  be  so  sought  after  as  was  he.  When 
there  was  a  drought  the  people  prayed  to  Joseph  for  rain ; 
when  there  was  a  flood  the  people  called  on  Joseph  for  fair 
weather ;  to  all  intents  and  purposes  Joseph  is  to-day  the 
active  God  of  the  common  people  in  Northern  Catholic  coun- 
tries ;  he  has  relieved  the  other  gods  of  the  necessity  of  listen- 
ing to  the  prayers  and  attending  to  the  wants  of  the  man 
of  the  street  and  +he  woman  of  the  house. 

This  popularity  of  Joseph  is  of  comparatively  recent  origin ; 
it  is  only  since  the  Reformation  that  his  festivals  have  been 
festivals  of  the  first  class,  and  only  in  our  own  times  that 
his  cult  has  reached  its  present  dimensions,  so  as  to  rival,  if 
not  obscure,  the  cult  of  the  Virgin. 

As  I  came  out  of  the  dim  religious  light  of  the  Cathedral 
into  the  open  day  of  the  street  my  mind  was  busy  with  the 
problem  of  this  popularity  of  Joseph.  For  I  perceived  that 
this  fact  was  not  isolated,  but  was  related  to  the  general 
religious  history  of  the  human  race.  The  experience  of 
Joseph  was  the  experience  of  all  the  gods :  in  favor  to-day, 
neglected  to-morrow.  One  god  going,  another  god  coming. 


xvi  PROEM 

The  spiritual  history  of  the  race  is  nothing  else  than  the 
history  of  this  passing  of  the  gods.  Everywhere  are  forsaken 
temples  and  broken  altars.  Fanes  once  famous  and  the  resort 
of  millions  are  now  buried  under  tons  of  earth,  being  brought 
to  our  knowledge  by  the  labors  of  the  antiquarian,  while  the 
names  of  the  gods  who  once  dwelt  in  those  temples,  long 
forgotten,  are  now  slowly  deciphered  by  the  painstaking 
scholar. 

As  I  dwelt  on  these  things  I  could  not  but  wonder  at 
this  passing  of  the  gods:  "Is  it,"  I  asked  myself,  "the  fickle- 
ness of  man  that  is  the  cause  of  this  strange  phenomenon, 
— that  we  change  the  fashion  of  our  gods  as  we  change  the 
fashion  of  our  garments,  putting  them  on  and  off  as  the 
whim  takes  us, — or  is  there  some  deep  underlying  reason 
compelling  this  change?  Are  both  men  and  gods  creatures 
of  a  Fate  that  gives  to  each  his  day  and  when  his  day  is  done 
bids  him  depart? 

With  this  thought  in  mind  I  began  to  read  once  more  the 
history  of  the  gods,  hoping  to  find  in  that  history  the  clew 
to  this  mystery.  I  was  not  disappointed. 

I  found, — or,  at  least,  I  think  I  found, — a  necessary  rela- 
tion between  the  life  of  a  god  and  the  life  of  his  people.  The 
god  of  a  given  people  is  the  embodiment  of  the  economic 
conditions  of  that  people,  and  the  economic  conditions  de- 
termine the  social  and  political  institutions  of  a  people. 
Hence  it  is  that  under  certain  economic  conditions,  with 
their  attendant  social  and  political  institutions,  a  given  god 
has  sway  over  the  religious  life  of  a  people.  When  these 
economic  conditions  change,  this  god  disappears,  and  a  new 
god  takes  his  place.  This  principle  is  most  perfectly  illus- 
trated in  the  religious  history  of  the  Western  world,  where 
the  gods  have  followed  one  another  in  an  orderly  succession : 
their  going  and  coming  determined  by  the  industrial  develop- 
ment of  the  people  and  the  consequent  changes  in  social  and 
political  organization. 

It  is  my  purpose  in  the  pages  that  follow  to  trace  this 
history  of  the  gods  to  its  natural  causes;  to  show  why  in 


'PROEM 

our  day,  for  instance,  the  popularity  of  Joseph  is  growing,1 
that  of  the  Virgin  declining.  In  order  to  do  this,  it  will 
not  be  necessary  to  go  back  to  the  gods  of  the  period  of 
savagery  and  early  barbarism.  We  can  with  profit  limit  our 
investigation  to  the  gods  of  the  Western  world  in  the  his- 
toric and  the  immediately  pre-historic  periods.  After  a  brief 
account  of  the  domestic  gods  of  the  Western  people, — the 
Manes,  the  Lares,  and  the  Penates  of  the  Romans, — we  will 
follow  the  history  of  the  various  Greek  dynasties,  tracing 
them  as  far  as  we  may  to  their  source  in  the  early  life  of 
the  Aryan  people.  We  will  mark  the  decline  of  the  Greek 
gods  before  the  oncoming  gods  of  Syria  and  the  East,  and 
their  final  overthrow  by  the  god  of  the  Hebrews.  We  will 
study  in  turn  the  transformation  of  the  Hebrew  god  by 
the  Greek  Dialectic,  the  outcome  of  which  was  the  Christian 
God  of  the  Trinity.  We  will  trace  the  rise  in  Christendom 
of  the  cult  of  the  Virgin  and  the  saints  down  to  our  own 
day,  when  all  these  gods  are  in  the  melting  pot,  and  the 
god  of  the  future  is  in  the  process  of  casting. 


1  "Prior  to  the  I2th  century  the  devotion  of  Joseph  was  not 
a  public  cult.  He  began  then  to  attract  the  worship  of  such 
eminent  persons  as  S.  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  of  S.  Thomas  Aquinas 
and  S.  Gertrude.  In  the  next  age  this  cult  was  promoted  by  men 
zealous  for  the  reformation  of  the  church,  among  whom  were  Peter 
d'Ailly  and  Jehan  Gerson.  It  was  only  under  the  pontificate  of 
Sixtus  XII  (1471-84)  that  S.  Joseph  was  placed  on  the  Calendar  of 
the  saints  and  honored  with  a  festival.  From  that  time  the  devotion 
acquired  greater  and  greater  popularity,  the  dignity  of  the  Feast 
keeping  pace  with  this  steady  growth.  At  first  only  a  festum  sim- 
plex, it  was  soon  elevated  to  a  double  rite  by  Innocent  VIII  (1484 
94)  and  declared  by  Gregory  XV  in  1621  a  festival  of  obligation  and 
raised  to  the  rank  of  a  double  of  the  second  class  by  Clement  XI 
(1700-21).  A  wonderful  and  unprecedented  increase  of  popularity 
called  for  a  luster  to  be  added  to  the  cult  of  the  Saint.  Accordingly 


xviii  PROEM 

one  of  the  first  acts  of  Pius  IX,  himself  singularly  devout  to  St. 
Joseph,  was  to  extend  to  the  whole  church  the  feast  of  the  Patron- 
age (1847)  and  in  December  1870  acceding  to  the  wishes  of  the 
bishops  and  all  the  faithful,  Pius  IX  solemnly  declared  the  Holy 
Patriarch  Joseph  patron  of  the  Catholic  Ch/urch  and  enjoined  that 
his  feast  (19  March)  should  be  celebrated  as  a  double  of  the  first 
class  (but  without  octave  on  account  of  Lent)." — The  Catholic  En- 
cyclopedia, Vol.  VIII,  pp.  505-6. 

A  feast,  double,  of  the  first  class  is  the  highest  honor  that  can 
be  paid  to  a  Catholic  divinity, — by  this  honor  Joseph  was  made 
the  equal  of  Mary,  and  second  only  to  Jesus. 

The  eminent  scientist  St.  George-Mivart,  himself  a  Catholic,  saw 
in  this  growing  cult  of  Joseph  a  preparation  on  the  part  of  the  Cath- 
olic church  for  the  acknowledgment  of  the  natural  paternity  of 
Joseph.  St.  George-Mivart  died  excommunicate. 


BOCK  i 
THE  GODS  OF  THE  HOUSE 


As  man  emerged  from  savagery  and  lower  barbarism  into 
higher  barbarism!  and  civilization,  he  changed  gradually, — but 
radically, — his  method  of  getting  his  living.  Having  in  his 
earlier  periods  domesticated  fire  and  brought  under  his  hand 
the  more  timid  and  useful  of  the  animals,  he  mastered  the 
rudiments  of  agriculture  so  that  it  was  no  longer  necessary 
for  him  to  wander  far  and  wide  in  search  of  food.  He  had 
but  to  settle  upon  the  land,  to  build  him  a  house,  and  there 
a  man  might  live  year  after  year,  with  his  wives  and  his 
children,  his  men  servants  and  his  women  servants,  his  oxen 
and  his  asses,  his  horses  and  his  dogs,  his  cattle  and  his  sheep, 
and  so  far  as  his  living  was  concerned,  never  go  beyond  the 
confines  of  his  own  fields. 

The  common  labor  of  his  household  applied  to  the  land 
gave  him  and  his  family  an  abundant  and  a  constant  food 
supply.  He  harnessed  his  oxen  and  his  asses  to  the  plow 
and  by  their  strength  turned  the  furrow  in  the  field.  His 
horse  and  his  dog  were  his  companions  in  the  hunt,  which 
became  the  amusement  of  his  leisure  rather  than  the  business 
of  his  life.  In  return  for  his  care  and  protection,  the  cattle 
yielded  him  milk  and  butter  and  meat  for  his  table;  the  sheep 
gave  him  of  its  wool  for  his  clothing;  he  gathered  from  his 
fields  a  harvest  of  wheat  and  lentils  and  roots;  his  hillsides 
were  planted  with  his  orchards  and  vineyards,  so  that  he, 
with  his  household,  could  eat  and  drink  and  be  merry  all  the 
days  of  his  life.  His  fields  were  his  wealth,  his  house  was 
his  castle,  and  there  the  man  of  the  house  ruled  as  the  lord 
of  the  house  and  the  land. 

It  was  during  the  later  period  of  barbarism  and  the  earlier 
period  of  civilization  that  man  became  conscious  of  his  pater- 
nity; it  was  not  until  he  became  a  farmer  that  he  became, 

1 


2  THE   WAYS   OF   THE   GODS 

in  any  true  sense  of  the  word,  a  father.  Prior  to  the  institu- 
tion of  the  family  man  was  simply  the  male  of  the  species; 
his  relation  to  the  female  was  instinctive  and  temporary. 
He  was  not  conscious  that  his  union  with  her  was  productive 
of  a  child ;  he  did  not  have  for  that  child  responsibility  or 
affection. 

In  the  earliest  period  of  human  development  the  children 
were  the  children  of  the  mother,  not  of  the  father;  for  that 
was  the  age  of  mother-right, — when  descent  was  traced 
through  the  female  line.  The  male  performed  his  function, 
then  went  his  way  and  forgot  it;  the  female  bore  in  her 
womb  the  seed  of  this  encounter,  brought  it  forth  in  her 
pain,  and  nursed  it  at  her  breast.  It  was  her  child,  and  she 
could  never  forget  it. 

But  when  man  ceased  to  be  a  wanderer,  settled  upon  his 
land,  and  lived  year  by  year  in  close  intimacy  with  his 
woman,  he  became  gradually  conscious  that  her  children  were 
also  his  children,  and  the  mysterious  process  of  reproduction 
engaged  his  attention  and  stirred  in  his  soul  feelings  that 
found  expression  in  the  religion  of  the  house,  than  which 
no  religion  has  been  more  enduring,  or  has  influenced  more 
powerfully  the  history  of  mankind.  The  religion  of  the 
house  was  the  binding  force  of  the  family ;  and  the  family 
is  that  institution  by  means  of  which  man  passed  from  sav- 
agery and  lower  barbarism  into  higher  barbarism  and  civil- 
ization. 

The  family,  in  its  nearer  perfect  form,  is  the  achievement 
of  the  Aryan  race;  and  largely  because  of  the  creation  of 
this  institution  the  Aryan  race  has  the  leadership  of  the 
world.  In  the  family  the  Aryan  evolved  an  economic  institu- 
tion that  gave  him  mastery  over  his  food  supply,  which 
developed  his  social  instincts,  and  in  which  he  exercised  the 
powers  of  government. 

The  conscious  union  of  a  man  and  a  woman  for  the  pro- 
creation of  children  was  not  the  cause  of  the  family,  it  was 
the  consequence.  Man  was  conscious  of  his  dog  and  his 
horse  long  before  he  was  conscious  of  his  wife,  who  was 
first  his  slave  and  then  his  consort.  The  woman  had  dis- 


THE   WAYS   OF   THE   GODS  3 

covered  the  uses  of  fire,  had  tilled  the.  field,  and  had  tamed 
the  animals  while  man  was  roving  as  a  warrior  and  a  hunter 
in  search  of  excitement  and  food.  Finding  his  food  no  longer 
in  the  forest,  but  at  the  fireside,  he  settled  down,  appro- 
priating the  woman  and  her  discoveries  to  his  own  uses. 

Improving  upon  the  methods  of  his  woman,  the  man  mas- 
tered the  art  of  smelting  iron,  made  a  coulter  for  his  plow, 
fashioned  an  axe,  a  spade,  a  shovel,  and  a  hoe;  put  these  in 
the  hands  of  his  women  and  his  slaves,  and  by  means  of  their 
labor,  under  his  directing  eye,  secured  for  himself  (and, 
incidentally,  for  his  dependents)  food  and  clothing  and  shelter 
and  a  place  and  a  name  in  the  earth. 

The  man  had  to  defend  these  his  possessions  against  all 
comers.  The  land  and  the  women  and  the  children  and  the 
slaves  were  organized  for  defense  as  much  as  for  production. 
The  field  was  trenched ;  the  garden  was  walled ;  a  watch  was 
kept  day  and  night,  to  guard  against  the  assault  of  the 
wandering  tribes  that  continually  threatened  the  existence  of 
the  family.  The  family  was  an  armed  force  of  which 
the  head  of  the  family  was  the  commander,  as  well  as  an 
industrial  establishment  of  which  he  was  the  superintendent ; 
thus  being  welded  into  unity  by  a  common  interest  and 
a  common  danger.  Obedience  to  the  head  of  the  house  was 
a  necessity,  if  the  house  were  to  stand.  A  divided  house  was 
a  fallen  house. 

It  was  under  such  conditions  that  the  idea  of  property 
was  developed  and  established  its  sway  over  the  mind  and 
heart  of  man.  The  land  was  his  land,  the  women  his  women, 
the  children  his  children,  the  slaves  his  slaves,  the  cattle  and 
the  sheep  his  cattle  and  sheep.  To  extend  the  area  of  his 
land,  to  increase  the  number  of  souls  under  his  hand,  was 
the  consuming  ambition  of  the  head  of  the  family. 

Not  only  did  man  in  evolving  the  family  change  his  mode 
of  living  but  he  modified  in  the  profoundest  manner  his  view 
of  life  itself.  His  life  was  no  longer  limited  by  the  fact  of 
his  death ;  his  ownership  did  not  cease  with  his  decease. 
When  he  died  the  landholder  did  not  lose  his  grip  upon 
the  land.  If  he  did  not  any  longer  dwell  on  it,  he  dwelt 


4  THE   WAYS   OF   THE   GODS 

in  it.  He  had  in  it  his  grave,  and  from  his  grave  he  ruled 
the  land  with  a  new  and  mystic  power.  From  being  the 
man  of  the  house  he  became  the  god  of  the  house. 

Ancestor  worship  is  that  form  of  religion  which  has  pre- 
vailed wherever  property  in  land  and  the  possession  of  wife 
and  children  have  made  of  the  man  a  landowner  and  a  house- 
holder. Man  under  these  circumstances  extended  his  per- 
sonality in  space  over  land  and  in  time  through  his  children. 
His  desire  for  land  was  the  outcome  of  his  will  to  power, 
his  desire  for  children  of  his  will  to  live.  His  children,  the 
seed  of  his  loins,  were  his  support  and  defense  while  on 
the  earth,  his  servants  and  suppliants  while  in  the  earth. 
In  the  thought  of  the  ancient  the  death  of  the  father  did  not 
remove  him  from  the  family  circle.  His  tomb  was  the  sacred 
table  of  the  family,  his  spirit  the  guardian  spirit  of  the  house, 
his  worship  the  unifying  principle  of  the  family  life. 

As  the  years  went  by,  and  as  one  after  another  the  heads 
of  the  family  went  down  into  the  grave,  so  did  the  number 
of  the  gods  of  the  family  increase.  Every  family  was  in 
the  keeping  of  a  host  of  divinities  who  were  the  guardians 
of  its  peace  and  the  objects  of  its  worship.  To  them  the 
living  head  of  the  family  made  obeisance  as  he  passed  over 
the  threshold,  to  them  he  made  oblation  when  he  sat  down 
to  meat,  for  them  he  kept  festival  and  holy  day,  and  none 
but  he  and  his  house  could  share  in  the  sacred  rites  of  this 
household  religion. 

These  House  Spirits  were  called  by  different  names  in 
different  lands,  but  whatever  that  name,  the  conception  of 
the  gods  was  the  same.  By  the  Greeks  they  were  called 
demons  and  heroes ;  among  the  .Latins  they  were  known 
as  the  Manes,  the  Lares,  and  the  Penates.  And  while  these 
divinities  had  in  their  keeping  the  general  interests  of  the 
family  and  might  be  called  upon  for  any  purpose,  yet  there 
was  among  them  a  sort  of  rude  division  of  labor,  so  that  each 
class  was  responsible,  in  a  way,  for  a  given  guardianship  of 
the  family  life.  The  Manes  were  the  keepers  of  the  blood;  the 
Lares  were  the  keepers  of  the  gates ;  the  Penates  were  the  keep- 
ers of  the  fire  and  the  store.  It  was  the  duty  of  the  Manes  to 


THE   WAYS  OF   THE   GODS  5 

preserve  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage  bed,  of  the  Lares  to 
secure  the  integrity  of  the  family  estate,  and  of  the  Penates 
to  keep  alive  the  fires  on  the  hearth  and  to  watch  over  the 
contents  of  the  cupboard. 


CHAPTER  II 
The  Manes 

"Nothing,"  says  Dr.  Hearn  in  his  interesting  and  valuable 
'History  of  the  Aryan  Household/  "was  farther  from 
the  minds  of  archaic  men  than  the  notion  that  all  men 
were  of  one  blood,  and  were  the  creatures  of  an  All-Father 
in  Heaven.  The  universal  belief  of  the  early  world  was 
that  men  were  of  different  bloods ;  that  they  each  had  fathers 
of  their  own ;  and  that  these  fathers  were  not  in  heaven,  but 
beneath  in  the  earth.  They  had  a  strong  and  practical  con- 
viction that  they  lived  under  a  Divine  protection ;  that  this 
protection  extended  to  themselves  and  all  the  members  of 
their  household  and  that  its  influence,  not  only  did  not 
defend  but  was  usually  hostile  to  others.  Those  others  had 
in  like  manner  their  own  gods,  who  naturally  favored  and 
protected  them  as  household  gods  ought  to  do.  The  House 
Father  of  old  cared  little  whether  the  universe  had  one 
author  or  many  authors ;  his  practical  duty,  his  hopes  and 
fears  centered  upon  his  own  hearth.  Profoundly  religious, 
indeed  he  was,  but  his  religion  assumed  a  different  form  from 
that  with  which  we  are  familiar.  In  its  origin,  its  objects 
and  its  results  it  was  entirely  domestic."1 

The  primary  concern  of  the  House-Father  was  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  house.  As  he  could  not  live  forever  in  the 
house,  he  must  have  a  son  to  take  his  place  when  he  was 
gone.  It  must  be  a  son  and  not  a  daughter;  for  in  the  ancient 
Aryan  family  the  female  had  no  rights  of  inheritance;  she 

1  "History    of    the    Aryan     Household,"    Wm.     Edw.     Hearn ;     Lon- 
don, 1879. 


6  THE   WAYS   OF   THE   GODS 

could  own  nothing,  not  even  herself.  Until  the  House- 
Father  had  provided  an  heir  for  his  estate  he  had  failed  in 
the  most  signal  of  his  duties.  To  perform  this  function  prop- 
erly required  the  careful  selection  of  the  woman  who  was 
to  be  the  mother  of  his  son.  With  this  woman  he  must 
have  exclusive  rights  of  cohabitation.  She  must  be  his  and 
his  only,  guarded  with  jealous  care,  in  order  that  the  man 
might  be  sure  that  the  child  born  of  this  woman  was  his 
child  and  so  the  due  and  lawful  heir  to  his  property  and 
his  government. 

This  necessity  on  the  part  of  the  House  Father,  to  give 
an  heir  to  his  house,  gave  rise  to  all  the  sanctities  of  mar- 
riage and  to  the  enforced  chastity  of  the  family  woman.  The 
ancient  Aryan  man  did  not  marry,  as  we  say,  for  love,  nor 
yet  for  companionship ;  his  marriage  was  not  a  pleasure,  it 
was  a  duty ;  it  was  not  so  much  the  concern  of  the  man  him- 
self as  it  was  the  concern  of  his  house.  By  his  marriage 
he  could  make  or  mar  the  fortunes  of  his  house.  In  his 
wife  he  must  find  qualities  that  would  be  for  the  advantage 
of  his  son  who  was  to  be  born  of  her.  Her  blood  must  be 
pure  (for  was  it  not  the  blood  of  his  unborn  son  and  heir?)  ; 
her  family  must  be  equal  or  superior  to  her  man's,  that  his 
son  might  not  be  ashamed  as  the  child  of  a  low-born  woman ; 
her  dowry  must  be  rich,  in  order  that  the  estate  of  the  son 
might  be  increased  by  her  wealth.  The  ancient  Aryan  knew 
nothing  about  eugenics  as  a  science,  but  he  practiced  it  most 
sedulously  as  an  art.  He  did  not  choose  his  wife  as  the 
idle  pastime  of  a  summer  night,  but  he  selected  her  with  all 
the  care  with  which  a  racing  man  chooses  a  brood-mare  for 
his  prize  stallion.  The  marriage  of  the  head  of  the  house 
was  a  religious  duty  "not  to  be  entered  into  unadvisedly  or 
lightly,  but  reverently,  discreetly,  advisedly,  soberly  and  in 
the  fear  of  the  gods."  2 

Marriage  under  these  conditions  was  a  sacrament.  The 
Manes  of  the  House  were  present  at  its  celebration ;  the 
sacred  cake  was  broken  and  eaten  in  the  presence  of  the 

2  Marriage   Service,   English   Prayer   Book. 


THE   WAYS  OF   THE   GODS  7 

Divinities;  the  marriage  bed  was  blessed  by  the  Spirits  of 
the  Fathers,  and  when  the  child  was  conceived  it  was  these 
same  gods  who  gave  life  to  the  seed,  safety  to  the  womb. 
Children  so  begotten  were  not  so  much  the  children  of  the 
individual  man  and  woman  as  they  were  the  children  of  the 
house;  this  was  especially  true  of  the  first-born  son  and  heir. 
When  the  woman  had  given  to  the  house  its  future  lord  and 
master  she  had  in  that  house  the  place  of  honor  second  only 
to  that  of  the  House- Father ;  she  became  the  House-Mother; 
and  if  not  quite  the  equal  of  the  man,  yet  first  among  his 
servants  and  dependents.  The  Manes  of  the  House  became  her 
protectors  for  life,  and  her  children  rose  up  and  called  her 
blessed. 

It  was  this  conception  of  the  family  as  a  divine  institution 
tracing  its  descent  through  a  long  line  of  holy  ancestors  that 
made  chastity  the  cardinal  virtue  of  the  family  woman.  The 
unchaste  woman  corrupted  the  blood  of  the  family,  broke 
the  line  of  its  orderly  descent,  introduced  the  child  of  a 
stranger  into  the  family  circle,  deprived  the  House-Father 
of  his  right  to  have  his  own  seed  succeed  him  in  the  house, 
and, — more  dreadful  still, — this  disloyalty  of  the  woman  made 
profane  the  sacred  rites  of  the  domestic  religion. 

It  was  intolerable  to  the  Manes  of  the  House,  who  were 
the  keepers  of  the  blood,  that  the  bastard  seed  of  a  stranger 
should  sit  before  their  sacred  fires,  break  the  sacramental 
bread,  and  pour  out  the  holy  oblation.  The  same  feeling 
of  horror  was  excited  in  the  family  by  the  discovery  of 
such  a  profanation  of  the  family  altar  as  would  stir  the 
heart  of  a  pious  Catholic  upon  learning  that  the  holy  bread 
of  which  he  had  eaten  at  the  altar  had  been  blessed  by 
some  intruding,  unconsecrated  man.  There  was  no  punish- 
ment too  dire  to  be  visited  upon  the  woman  who  by  her 
unfaithfulness  so  disgraced  her  Lord,  shamed  her  children, 
defiled  the  family  blood,  and  blasphemed  the  Manes,  who 
were  the  Keepers  of  the  Blood.  Such  a  woman  was  burned 
with  fire,  she  was  stoned  with  stones,  she  was  whipped  naked 
out  into  the  wilds,  to  be  torn  and  devoured  by  the  beasts. 


8  THE   WAYS  OP   THE   GODS 

So  it  came  to  pass  that  pride,  and  love,  and  fear  combined 
to  secure  the  chastity  of  the  family  woman. 

Before  the  institution  of  the  family,  chastity,  in  the  modern 
sense,  was  not  held  in  high  esteem.  During  the  tribal  period 
the  men  and  the  women,  within  certain  restrictions,  were 
free  to  each  other.  Except  during  the  love  period,  jealousy 
was  unknown.  Tribal  men  would  freely  lend  their  women 
as  an  act  of  hospitality  to  the  stranger  visiting  them  for 
a  night;  nor  during  the  tribal  period  was  this  freedom  pro- 
ductive of  evil  results.  It  was  while  this  freedom  existed 
that  man  evolved  from  the  quadramana  into  the  human. 
Then  sexual  selection  was  the  controlling  force,  and  no 
question  of  either  family  or  property  kept  the  lover  from  his 
mate.  Only  after  the  institution  of  private  property,  with 
its  right  of  succession  to  the  lawful  heir,  was  established 
did  the  chastity  of  the  woman  become  of  any  concern  to 
the  man.  And  then  it  was  only  the  chastity  of  his  own 
women  that  he  cared  for. 

For  himself,  the  man, — after  the  institution  of  the  family, — 
claimed  and  maintained  that  freedom  which  had  been  the 
equal  privilege  of  both  sexes  during  the  tribal  period.  It 
never  so  much  as  entered  the  mind  of  archaic  man  that  he 
and  his  woman  were  subject  to  the  same  standard  of  morals, 
nor  did  the  archaic  woman  have  any  such  notion.  The  man 
lived  freely  with  his  concubines  under  the  same  roof  with 
his  wife,  and  she  saw  in  this  no  reason  for  jealousy,  no  de- 
rogation from  her  honor.  During  the  whole  of  the  family 
period  the  family  woman  has  not  been  ignorant  of  the  fact 
that  her  man  resorts  for  his  pleasure  to  women  outside  the 
pale  of  the  family.  She  is  not  as  a  family  woman  concerned 
for  the  virtue  of  the  woman  of  the  lower  class.  In  the 
days  of  slavery  the  slave  woman  was  the  natural  prey  of 
her  master;  and  wherever  slavery  prevails  the  women  of 
the  master  class  have  no  regard  whatever  for  the  virtue 
of  the  slave  woman.  These  slave  women  are  property,  their 
children  are  property;  marriage  in  any  true  sense  of  the 
word  is  for  them  out  of  the  question.  The  millions  of 
quadroons,  mulattoes,  and  negroids  in  the  South  are  abiding 


THE   WAYS  OF   THE   GODS  9 

witnesses  to  the  impunity  with  which  the  free  man  con- 
sorted with  the  slave  woman.  The  family  as  an  institution 
made  the  chastity  of  the  family  woman  the  cardinal  law 
of  the  family  life,  because  upon  this  depended  the  due  and 
lawful  succession  of  the  family  property. 

The  male  offender  against  this  law  of  the  family  was 
condemned,  not  because  of  his  sin  against  morality,  as  we 
call  it,  but  because  of  his  violation  of  the  rights  of  property. 
St.  Paul  puts  the  sin  upon  this  basis  when,  in  speaking  of 
the  male  offender,  he  says:  "Let  no  man  go  beyond  and  de- 
fraud his  brother  in  this  matter."  So  all  ancient  morality  views 
adultery  as  one  man's  violation  of  the  property  rights  of 
another  man.  By  this  nefarious  act  the  offender  robs  his 
neighbor  of  his  most  sacred  possession,  he  steals  into  the 
most  secret  place  of  the  family  and  appropriates  to  his  seed 
the  right  to  succession  in  the  family  property  and  the  priv- 
ilege of  participation  in  the  rites  of  the  family  religion  of 
another  man.  The  man  who  would  do  this  has  always  been 
considered  deserving  of  death,  and  the  injured  husband  has  al- 
ways had  the  right  to  kill  him  on  sight.  But  the  Manes, 
the  Keepers  of  the  Blood  of  each  family,  have  no  regard 
for  the  blood  of  any  other  family  except  their  own,  hence 
it  is  that  the  injured  husband  has  always  been  the  ridicule 
of  his  fellow  husbands. 

In  our  day  the  Manes,  the  Keepers  of  the  Blood,  have 
fled  the  house.  The  man  is  no  longer  the  master  of  the 
house:  his  woman  has  become  his  equal;  she  is  demanding 
that  he  shall  be  as  true  to  her  as  she  to  him,  not  necessarily 
because  she  loves  him,  but  because  she  has  the  same  prop- 
erty rights  in  him  that  he  has  in  her.  This  change  in  the 
attitude  of  woman  is  fraught  with  consequences  that  are 
revolutionary  in  their  character.  It  is  destructive  of  that 
relationship  of  the  woman  to  the  man  which  was  basic  to 
the  family  as  an  institution. 

The  Manes  were  the  spirits  of  dead  men  whom  the  woman 
was  required  to  worship  even  as  she  was  compelled  to  obey 
her  living  lord  and  master.  The  modern  woman  is  refusing 
to  obey  any  man  who  is  living,  nor  will  she  worship  any 


10  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

man  who  is  dead.  With  the  granting  of  domestic,  social, 
and  political  equality  to  women,  the  house  band  is  broken, 
the  unity  of  the  family  is  shattered,  the  Manes  of  the  family 
are  dismissed,  and  some  other  institution  than  that  of  the 
family  (as  it  was  conceived  by  our  fathers  and  believed  in 
by  our  mothers)  must  take  the  place  of  that  ancient  form 
of  social  order  as  the  keeper  of  the  virtue  of  the  man  as 
well  as  of  the  woman. 


CHAPTER   III 
The  Lares 

The  family  as  we  know  it  to-day  bears  little  or  no  relation 
to  that  ancient  institution  of  which  the  Lares  were  the 
Keepers  of  the  Gate.  With  us  the  basic  principle  of  the 
family  is  sex;  with  the  ancient  it  was  property.  With  us 
a  family,  in  the  popular  mind,  is  composed  of  a  man  and 
a  woman  and  children;  with  the  ancient  the  family  consisted 
of  a  man  possessed  of  land  and  house  and  slaves  and  women 
and  children.  A  landless  man  could  not,  urider  the  ancient 
custom,  be  a  family  man.  In  the  estimation  of  archaic  man 
it  was  land  and  house  and  slaves  and  cattle  that  gave  sig- 
nificance to  wife  and  children.  It  was  because  he  was  a 
man  of  property  that  the  ancient  desired  a  son  to  inherit 
his  estate;  and  in  order  to  secure  a  son  and  heir,  he  married 
a  wife.  The  sequence  in  his  mind  was:  first  property,  then 
a  son,  then  a  wife. 

The  family  in  the  beginning  was  an  organization  for  the 
taking  and  holding  of  property;  or,  in  other  words,  it  was 
an  industrial  establishment,  corporate  in  its  character,  having 
for  its  purpose  the  maintenance  of  the  members  of  the  house- 
hold. The  property  of  the  family  was  by  family  custom 
vested  in  the  oldest  living  agnate,  called  the  House-Father, 
thus  making  him  a  corporation  sole.  The  House-Father, 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  11 

being  the  owner,  was  the  ruler  of  the  house,  and  his  owner- 
ship with  its  right  to  rule  passed  by  succession  to  his  eldest 
son.  The  source  of  the  wealth  which  gave  the  family  im- 
portance was:  first  the  land  and  then  the  slave  to  work  the 
land. 

It  was  this  appropriation  of  land  by  each  family  in  sever- 
alty  that  revolutionized  society,  substituting  the  family  for 
the  tribe  as  the  industrial,  social,  and  political  unit.  This 
revolution  was  not  accomplished  without  violence.  In  the 
beginning  the  only  title  a  man  had  to  the  land  which  he 
occupied  was  the  right  of  possession,  and  this  right  might 
be, — and  was, — called  in  question  by  every  other  man.  In 
those  days,  as  always,  might  was  right,  and  the  stronger 
man  was  ever  on  the  watch  to  seize  upon  the  land  and  slaves 
and  women  and  children  of  the  weaker  man.  It  was,  there- 
fore, to  the  interest  of  each  landholder  to  appropriate  only 
so  much  land  as  he  could  defend.  Outlying  land  was  a 
source  of  danger. 

In  those  early  days  the  title  to  land  was  possession  and 
use.  Because  it  was  to  him  the  source  of  his  life,  because 
its  cultivation  gave  him  occupation,  because  upon  the  land 
he  built  his  house  and  in  the  land  he  made  his  grave,  there- 
fore the  land  to  the  archaic  man  was  sacred ;  for  not  only 
was  it  the  home  of  the  living,  it  was  also  the  place  of  the 
dead.  And  it  was  the  dead  ancestors  in  their  graves  who 
really  possessed  the  land  and,  as  the  Lares,  were  the  Keepers 
of  the  Gates. 

The  belief  of  the  ancient  man  in  the  ghosts  of  his  fathers, 
with  their  unknown  power  to  help  and  harm,  was  better 
than  a  title  deed  to  secure  each  man  in  the  possession  of  his 
land.  Every  man  feared  the  Lares  of  every  other  man.  The 
earth  in  those  days  was  peopled  with  a  host  of  spiritual  be- 
ings,— unseen,  unheard,  smiting  with  the  pestilence,  and  kill- 
ing with  the  plague.  If  any  untoward  accident  befell  a  man, 
or  sickness  came  to  him  after  he  had  trespassed  on  his 
neighbor's  land,  then  he,  as  well  as  his  neighbor,  ascribed 
his  misfortune  to  the  wrath  of  the  Lares  of  that  land.  Thus 
each  man  had  a  wholesome  fear  of  the  ghosts  of  his  neighbor. 


12  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

He  was  ready  to  fight  his  neighbor,  whom  he  could  see,  but 
not  his  neighbor's  ghosts,  whom  he  could  not  see.  In  the 
good  old  days  every  house  was  haunted  and  every  field  be- 
witched, and  it  was  the  haunt  and  the  bewitchment  that  was 
the  safety  of  the  house  and  the  land.  Domestic  religion 
was  the  keeper  of  domestic  wealth  and  life.  It  was  the  fear 
of  the  Lares  that  gave  sacredness  to  property  and  made  of 
theft  and  trespass  not  only  a  crime  but  a  sacrilege. 

During  the  tribal  period  property  in  land  was  un- 
known and  impossible.  Then  the  hunter  had  the  freedom 
of  the  wood  and  the  fisherman  the  freedom  of  the  stream ; 
every  man  lived  upon  the  immediate  product  of  his  own 
labor,  and  his  gods  were  the  gods  of  the  sky  and  the  wood 
and  the  water.  Barbarians  of  the  lower  order  and  sav- 
ages have  little  or  no  sense  of  property.  The  Negro  in 
the  South  did  not  consider  stealing  a  sin ;  coming,  as  he 
did,  a  barbarian  into  the  midst  of  civilization,  he  had  no 
conception  of  that  sacredness  of  property  which  is  at  the 
foundation  of  the  civilized  family  and  state. 

This  sacredness  of  property  was  religious  in  its  origin. 
It  existed  for  centuries  before  it  gave  rise  to  the  civil  laws 
that  are  now  its  security.  The  State,  having  for  its  main 
function  the  protection  of  the  rights  of  private  property, 
was  not  the  cause,  it  was  the  consequence  of  those  rights. 
Long  before  the  reign  of  law  we  had  the  reign  of  Lar. 
Each  House-Father,  absolute  Lord  and  master  of  his  own 
house  and  land,  was  under  the  protection  of  his  Lares;  the 
fear  of  them,  and  the  dread  of  them  was  upon  all  the  coun- 
try-round about.  If  his  lands  were  seized  by  a  stronger 
man  than  he,  his  Lares  were  expelled  from  the  land,  the 
graves  of  his  ancestors  violated,  and  he  and  his  household 
weie  either  killed  or  reduced  to  slavery. 

It  was  this  powerlessness  of  the  individual  household  to 
protect  its  property  that  gave  rise  to  the  State.  The  City 
State  was  an  organization  of  House-Fathers  for  mutual  de- 
fense :  a  wall,  which  property-owners  of  a  given  neighborhood 
combined  to  build,  behind  which  they  could  find  safety  in 
times  of  danger. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  13 

The  family  was  the  unit  of  the  State;  the  heads  of  the 
families  were  the  citizens  of  the  State.  Neither  the 
women  nor  the  slaves  had  anything  to  do  with  the  affairs 
of  the  City.  The  family  did  not  merge  into  the  State;  it 
retained  all  its  ancient  rights  and  privileges.  The  House- 
Father  was  still  the  master  of  the  house  and  of  the  land, 
still  absolute  ruler  of  the  women  and  the  children  and  the 
slaves  of  his  house.  The  State  did  not  and  could  not,  in 
its  earlier  period,  exercise  jurisdiction  over  the  family.  Chil- 
dren and  women  and  slaves  were  judged  by  the  House- 
Father  as  they  had  been  before  the  days  of  the  civil  law.  The 
State  at  the  first  did  nothing  but  give  the  force  of  law  to 
the  family  customs  and  privileges  already  existing. 

This  relation  of  the  family  to  the  land,  and  of  the  House- 
Father  to  the  family,  classified  ancient  society  as  master 
and  slave,  patron  and  client,  patrician  and  plebeian. 

The  House-Father  was  the  superintendent  of  an  indus- 
trial organization  in  which  the  slaves  were  the  workers. 
These  laborers  on  the  land  were  given  in  return  for  their 
labor  just  enough  to  keep  them  alive  and  at  work.  When 
a  slave  was  unprofitable  because  of  age,  or  sickness,  or 
bad  temper,  he  was  put  to  death.  In  the  days  of  the 
family  the  power  of  the  master  over  the  slave  was  unre- 
strained except  by  self-interest.  A  House-Father  could 
reduce  his  own  children  to  this  servile  condition;  he  could 
even  sell  his  wife  into  slavery.  The  master  of  the  house 
was  kept  in  check  only  by  the  Spirits  of  the  House ;  if  by  his 
violence  he  threatened  the  existence  of  the  house,  the  house 
might  restrain  him  or  put  him  to  death. 

But  while  the  Lares,  the  Keepers  of  the  Gates  protected, 
in  a  measure,  the  wife  and  the  children,  they  left  the  slaves 
exposed  to  the  cruel  mercies  of  the  master  class.  Slave 
insurrections,  which  were  of  conatant  recurrence,  bear  wit- 
ness to  the  intolerable  condition  of  the  working  class  un- 
der the  family  rule  in  the  ancient  world.  That  some  mas- 
ters were  better  than  other  masters  is  undoubtedly  true, 
but  all  masters  were  bad,  the  slaves  being  the  judges.  This 
classification  of  society  gave  to  the  master  all  the  bene- 


14  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

fits  cv  .  .g  from  the  common  effort  of  the  family.  He  had 
honoi  in  the  State  and  leisure  for  the  school.  He  became 
an  educated  man,  and  his  education  gave  him  additional  power 
over  the  slave.  He  was  the  priest  of  the  family  religion. 
The  Lares  were  his  Lares,  the  Keepers  of  his  Gates,  and 
he  could,  not  only  threaten  the  recalcitrant  slave  with  the 
lash,  but  also  could  scare  the  soul  of  the  trembling  wretch 
out  of  his  body  by  the  fear  of  the  wrath  of  the  Lares  of  the 
House.  As  priest  of  the  house  the  master  had  over  the  slave 
the  power  of  a  god. 

In  every  household  there  were  not  only  wife  and  children 
and  slaves,  there  were  also  a  number  of  hangers-on,  de- 
pendents upon  the  bounty  of  the  house,  whom  the  Romans 
called  clients:  poor  relations,  freedmen,  and  the  children  of 
freedmen.  The  importance  of  a  master  of  a  house  was 
gaged  by  the  number  of  these  hangers-on.  They  came  to 
him  early  every  morning  to  pay  their  devotions,  they  fol- 
lowed him  about  in  public,  they  were  his  satellites,  and  were 
under  the  protection  of  his  ancestral  spirits ;  the  Lares  took 
no  alarm  when  the  client  stepped  over  the  threshold.  Clientage 
in  some  form  was  common  to  the  family  in  Greece  and  Asia, 
while  in  Rome  it  assumed  the  proportions  of  a  vast  abuse. 

By  the  automatic  action  of  the  rights  of  property,  families 
themselves  were  classified  as  firsts  and  seconds, — in  Rome 
as  patrician  and  plebeian,  in  England  as  nobility  and  gentry. 
The  first  families,  the  patrician  and  the  nobles,  are  those 
who  come  first  in  order  of  time  and  appropriate  the  best 
land.  Having  the  advantage  of  the  years  over  newcomers, 
the  ancestors  of  the  patrician  are  held  in  higher  esteem. 
The  chief  reliance  of  the  old  families  is,  necessarily,  upon 
their  ancestry, — these  families  being  important  because  they 
are  old.  The  man  of  new  family,  even  though  he  be  a  Cicero 
or  a  Burke,  is  held  in  mild  contempt  by  the  most  witless  scion 
of  the  older  families.  The  Lares  of  the  Nobles  are  a  multitude, 
the  Lares  of  the  newcomer  can  be  counted  on  the  fingers. 
The  class-struggle  between  the  old  families  and  the  newcomer 
has  made  the  history  of  the  world.  It  ruined  the  Grecian 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  15 

cities,  it  disrupted  the  Roman  State,  it  was  productive  of  civil 
strife  in  England,  and  brought  about  the  great  cataclysm 
of  the  French  Revolution. 

With  the  institution  of  the  family,  there  came  into  existence 
a  class  of  out-family  men  and  women :  runaway  slaves,  prod- 
igal sons,  remnants  of  broken  families, — men  and  women 
without  land,  without  house,  without  Manes,  without  Lares, 
having  no  place  at  any  family  altar.  These  were  by  pro- 
fession outcasts,  vagabonds,  beggars,  thieves,  and  harlots. 
These  out-family  folk  overran  the  world ;  they  were  the  pests 
of  the  ancient  as  they  are  the  danger  of  the  modern  house ; 
they  made  up  the  armies  of  the  conquerors,  and  in  these 
out-family  hordes  were  generated  plagues  that  swept  over 
the  ancient  world,  destroying  thousands  upon  thousands  oi 
family  lives.  The  Lares  of  the  House  had  for  these  outcasts 
a  singular  and  a  deadly  hatred ;  for  were  they  not  the  natural 
enemies  of  the  house,  preying  upon  its  substance  and  corrupt- 
ing its  blood?  Private  property  in  land,  the  basic  principle  of 
the  family,  was  the  fruitful  cause  of  poverty,  with  the  wretch- 
edness and  degradation  that  always  follow  in  its  camp.  That 
same  poverty  is  to-day  destroying  the  family  and  changing 
the  face  of  civilization. 

Private  property  in  land  has,  in  the  course  of  time,  passed 
out  of  the  keeping  of  the  family  Lares  into  the  care  of  the 
civil  law;  what  a  man  had  once  to  do  for  himself  society 
now  does  for  him.  The  Keepers  of  the  Gates  are  no 
longer  the  Lares  but  the  lawyers.  Land  tenure  has  passed 
far  away  from  the  simple  principle  of  occupation  and  use, 
and  is  entangled  and  strangled  in  a  vast  and  complicated 
legal  system  most  unnatural  and  unholy.  No  Lares  keep 
the  gates  of  the  modern  landholder,  for  the  land  is  no  longer 
sacred :  it  is  a  commodity  to  be  bought  and  sold  in  the  market ; 
it  serves  the  base  uses  of  speculation.  The  outlying  field 
is  no  longer  a  danger,  it  is  a  source  of  wealth.  Millions  of 
acres  of  the  best  land  are  kept  out  of  use  and  held  for  a  rise 
in  the  market. 

The   Lares   of  the  archaic   world,   if  they  still  haunt  the 


16  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

earth  and  hover  in  the  air,  must  look  down  in  sad,  bewildered 
wonderment  upon  the  modern  world,  which  to  them  must 
seem  a  mad  world,  wherein  all  sane  principles  have  been 
driven  out  by  crazy  notions.  Here  are  millions  upon  millions 
of  landless  men  with  wives  and  children  combining  to  secure 
the  title  of  a  few  landlords  to  their  land ;  these  landlords 
doing  nothing  with  or  for  the  land  but  to  take  from  it  rents 
and  profits.  These  two  things,  idle  (land  and  starving 
people,  condemn  the  world  as  it  is  and  call  for  a  new  race 
of  Lares  to  visit  the  vengeance  of  the  gods  upon  these  pro- 
faners  of  the  land. 


CHAPTER  IV 

The  Penates 

The  hearth  is  the  heart  of  the  family  life.  To  keep  the 
fire  alive  on  the  hearth  is  the  bounden  duty  of  the  family 
gods.  We  of  the  modern  world  have  lost  altogether  those 
conceptions  that  made  "hearth"  and  "altar"  sacred  words. 
Domestic  religion  sanctified  domestic  life.  The  Penates,  who 
were  the  Spirits  of  Ancestors,  were  the  Keepers  of  the  Fire 
and  of  the  Store. 

It  was  a  long  time  after  man  had  learned  the  uses  of  fire 
before  he  lost  for  it  his  reverential  wonder.  Its  flame  was 
his  light  in  the  darkness,  its  heat  his  protection  from  the 
cold.  Fire  has  always  been  worshipped  by  man,  as  it  is 
written :  "Our  God  is  a  consuming  fire."  Fire  is  alive ;  it 
leaps  and  whirls,  it  jumps  and  dances.  When  men  wish  to 
celebrate  they  build  a  fire.  There  is  nothing  man  dreads 
more  than  fire,  there  is  nothing  man  loves  more  than  fire.  It 
is  for  him  both  creator  and  destroyer. 

It  was  the  domestication  of  fire  that  changed  man  from  a 
savage,  living  upon  roots  and  raw  flesh,  into  a  civilized  being, 
feasting  on  roast  beef  and  baked  potatoes.  It  was  the  cap- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  17 

ture  and  taming  of  fire  that  made  possible  the  home  and  the 
family.  Because  of  this,  the  Penates,  the  Keepers  of  the 
Fire,  are  the  best  beloved  of  the  family  gods.  With  them 
the  family  was  intimate  as  it  gathered  around  the  hearth 
when  the  day's  work  was  over;  they  were  present  when  the 
House-Father  and  the  House-Mother  gave  bread  and  meat 
to  the  children  and  the  slaves,  and  after  the  dinner  was  over 
the  Penates  inspired  the  members  of  the  household  to  speak 
words  of  love  and  wisdom  one  to  another.  The  husband 
could  have  a  secret  from  his  wife,  the  wife  from  the  husband, 
but  to  the  Penates  all  secrets  were  open.  The  light  of  their 
fire  penetrated  to  the  marrow  of  the  bones.  All  profanation 
of  family  life  was  an  offense  to  the  Penates,  to  be  punished 
by  the  heat  of  fever  and  the  cold  of  the  chill. 

While  the  family  slept,  the  Penates  watched ;  all  through 
the  night  the  dull  glow  of  their  life  was  seen  in  the  slow- 
burning  brand  lying  in  the  ashes,  that  kept  the  fire  alive  on 
the  hearth.  If  that  fire  died  out,  the  Penates  were  disgraced, 
and  the  family  shamed;  for  the  life  of  the  fire  once  gone 
was  not  easily  restored.  In  these  days  of  matches  and  elec- 
tricity the  smouldering  brand  has  lost  its  usefulness  and, 
therefore,  its  sacredness.  A  match  is  more  marvelous  than 
a  burning  brand,  electricity  still  more  wonderful  than  a 
match,  but  for  some  reason  they  neither  move  us  to  awe  nor 
win  us  to  love.  The  burning  brand,  the  open  fire,  and  the 
chimney  corner  were  the  creation  and  the  haunt  of  the  Pen- 
ates. Our  modern  improvements  have  improved  these  lovely 
gods  out  of  existence. 

The  Penates  were  not  only  the  Keepers  of  the  Fire,  they 
were  also  the  Guardians  of  the  Store.  It  was  their  duty  to 
inspire  the  cook  with  skill  to  make  delicate  dishes  for  the 
family  table,  to  watch  the  meat  before  the  fire,  to  scare  the 
rats  from  the  cupboard.  In  the  archaic  world  the  gods  were 
more  useful  than  ornamental.  The  men  and  women  of  that 
world  would  laugh  our  gods  to  scorn  and  think  of  them  with 
pity, — gods  shut  up  in  churches,  having  nothing  to  do  but  to 
listen  to  the  droning  of  prayers  and  the  confessions  of  sins; 
gods  who  pass  their  dreary  existence  away  from  the  warmth 


18  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

of  the  hearth,  the  smell  of  the  cooking,  the  chatter  of  the 
maids  and  the  stir  of  the  family  life!  A  god  upon  a  great 
white  throne,  with  cherubim  and  seraphim  bowing  before  him, 
may  have  power  and  dignity,  but  for  comfort  and  good-fellow- 
ship one  must  go  to  the  god  who  sits  by  the  fire,  inhales  the 
odor  of  spices,  and  the  flavor  of  the  bread  and  the  cake  and 
the  meat  that  are  cooking  in  the  kitchen.  Such  a  god  can 
understand  the  tribulations  of  the  cook  and  the  annoyances 
of  the  mistress ;  he  knows  by  experience  that  fire  burns  and 
ginger  is  hot  in  the  mouth.  All  other  religion  is  cold  and 
formal  beside  this  intimate  religion  of  the  hearth. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  since  the  Penates  were  the 
gods  of  the  hearth,  the  Keepers  of  the  Fire  and  the  Store, 
that  they  were  more  properly  goddesses,  and  that  it  was  the 
spirit  of  the  ancestress,  not  of  the  ancestor,  that  ruled  the 
roast.  But  not  so.  The  ancient  family  had  no  ancestress, 
only  ancestor.  Archaic  man  when  he  established  the  family 
did  not  grant  the  right  of  divinity  to  the  woman.  In  the 
estimation  of  the  male  the  female  was  not  possessed  of  a 
soul  to  survive  death.  Life  was  in  and  from  the  male,  and 
to  the  male  belonged  the  guardianship  of  life.  Man  vitalized, 
woman  organized.  Man  as  the  vitalizer  survived ;  woman 
perished  with  the  organization.  Archaic  man  did  not  reason 
philosophically,  he  took  his  stand  on  fact,  he  saw  that  he 
could  fulfill  all  his  functions  save  one  (and  that,  so  far  as 
he  was  concerned,  was  a  minor  one)  without  woman ;  while 
without  man  woman  could  not  accomplish  the  purpose  of 
her  being.  In  the  thought  of  the  man  woman  was  made 
for  man  and  not  man  for  woman.  It  was  his  right  to  rule, 
her  duty  to  obey.  Man  was  as  much  the  lord  of  the  hearth 
as  he  was  the  keeper  of  the  Gate ;  he  was  both  Lares  and 
Penates,  ruling  without  the  house  and  within  the  house  both 
in  life  and  in  death. 

The  institution  of  the  family  made  the  subjection  of  the 
woman  the  unalterable  law  of  the  family  life.  As  it  is  writ- 
ten :  "Her  desire  shall  be  to  her  husband  and  he  shall  rule 
over  her."  The  doctrine  of  the  domestic  equality  of  woman 
is  so  foreign  to  the  conception  of  the  family  that  it  makes 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  19 

of  that  venerable  institution  a  ruin  incapable  of  restoration. 
We  may  have  some  other  form  of  social  life  and  call  it  a 
"family,"  but  that  ancient  organization  known  to  our  fore- 
fathers as  the  family  is  passing  away  before  the  growing 
demand  for  woman's  rights.  Her  rights  to  personality  and 
to  property  are  as  fatal  to  the  family  as  is  her  right  to  vote. 
In  this  world  purse  is  power,  and  if  the  woman  is  the  keeper 
of  the  purse,  she  is  in  just  so  far  the  keeper  of  the  man. 
And  for  the  woman,  in  any  sense,  to  be  the  keeper  of  man 
outrages  every  principle  upon  which  the  family  is  based. 


CHAPTER  V 

New   Gods   for  Old 

All  over  the  world, — even  in  India,  China,  and  Japan, — 
household  worship,  with  its  altar  and  its  gods,  its  priests 
and  its  sacrifices,  is  rapidly  passing  away.  In  Europe  it 
survives  as  the  cult  of  a  decaying  aristocracy,  expressing 
itself  in  pride  of  birth ;  in  America  it  has  never  found  foot- 
hold. In  the  modern  world  the  family  has  long  since  lost 
all  knowledge  of  its  divine  origin ;  or,  if  it  retains  a  belief 
in  its  divinity,  it  bases  its  faith  not  on  the  assumption  that 
this  or  that  particular  family  can  trace  its  descent  from  some 
ancient  divinity,  nor  does  it  ascribe  divinity  to  its  ancestry 
as  a  body,  but  it  is  divine  because  the  family  is  an  institution 
ordained  of  God.  Its  divinity  is  not  a  matter  of  blood;  an- 
cestry has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

The  religious  sanction  of  the  family  in  the  Western  Chris- 
tian world  rests  upon  the  assertion  that  it  was  a  creation  of 
God  in  the  time  of  man's  innocency, — when  in  the  Garden  of 
Eden,  God  caused  a  deep  sleep  to  fall  upon  Adam  and  took 
of  his  rib  and  made  of  it  woman  and  brought  her  to  man 
and  decreed  that  a  man  should  leave  his  father  and  his 
mother  and  cleave  unto  his  wife  and  they  twain  should  be 


20  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

one  flesh.  If  one  does  not  believe  in  the  reality  of  this 
transaction  in  Eden,  then  for  him  the  family  has  no  religious 
sanction  whatever;  it  is  the  outcome  of  social  development, 
maintained  as  a  social  convenience.  If  one  does  believe  that 
God  in  the  beginning  made  man,  male  and  female  and  joined 
one  male  to  one  female  in  holy  wedlock,  then  one  must  hold 
that  all  families  are  equally  ancient,  equally  divine,  and  the 
family  of  the  king  takes  no  precedence  over  the  family  of 
the  hod-carrier.  Either  of  these  theories  is  fatal  to  the  aris- 
tocratic principle  of  society,  and  as  no  other  theory  is  pos- 
sible in  the  modern  world,  aristocracy  is  everywhere  giving 
place  to  democracy. 

The  family  as  an  institution  is  essentially  selfish :  the  wel- 
fare of  the  household  being  the  only  thought  of  the  household 
gods.  When  the  family  was  the  social,  political,  and  eco- 
nomic unit  of  the  State,  the  laws  were  made  in  the  interest 
of  the  family  and  not  of  the  community  as  a  whole.  Laws 
of  primogeniture  and  entail  still  hold  in  England,  disinheriting 
the  younger  children  in  favor  of  the  eldest  son.  This  self- 
ishness has  been  productive  of  untold  evil  in  the  world.  The 
family  has  reduced  the  out-family  elements  of  humanity  to 
slavery  and  serfdom,  and  condemned  the  mass  of  men  and 
women,  in  all  ages  since  the  family  was  instituted,  to  pov- 
erty and  ignorance.  I  To  this  day  the  family,  even  in  its 
modified  form,  is  a  hindrance  to  social  development.  I  Each 
family  looks  upon  its  own  things  and  not  on  the  things  of 
others.  This  selfish  attitude  of  the  family  man  to  the  outsider 
is  exemplified  in  the  attitude  of  the  modern  employer  to  his 
working  people.  Once  I  was  taken  by  an  employer  into  his 
factory,  and  there  I  saw  a  girl  sitting  on  a  bench,  pounding 
a  machine  with  her  foot,  an  occupation  she  had  been  steadily 
engaged  in  for  nine  hours.  In  this  work  she  had  spent  the 
strength  of  her  womanhood ;  growing  old  and  hopeless  and 
haggard  before  she  was  twenty.  The  man  for  whom  this 
girl  was  working  did  not  give  the  girl  a  thought  beyond  the 
paying  her  wages.  Leaving  the  factory,  we  went  to  the  house 
of  this  man,  where  his  own  girl  came  to  meet  him, — fresh, 
lovely,  full  of  the  joy  of  living,— and  she  told,  and  her  father 


21 

listened  to,  the  story  of  her  day's  pleasure.  She  was  his 
daughter,  the  other  woman  was  his  slave.  He  would  have  been 
broken-hearted  had  his  daughter  been  compelled  to  take  the 
place  of  the  woman  in  the  mill.  It  is  this  essential  selfishness 
of  the  family  and  the  family  gods  that  has  roused  against 
the  family  and  its  gods  that  anger  of  the  greater  gods; 
which  has  driven  the  Manes  from  the  chamber,  the  Penates 
from  the  hearth,  and  the  Lares  from  the  gate. 

All  the  forces  of  the  modern  world, — religious,  political, 
and  industrial, — are  working  the  destruction  of  the  family 
religion.  We  can  no  longer  worship  our  remote  ancestors, 
for  we  are  greater  gods  than  they.  They  were  in  the  be- 
ginning rudimentary  men,  low  browed  and  light-brained; 
their  instincts  were  fierce ;  their  manners  were  brutal ;  their 
customs  foolish.  We  may  owe  them  gratitude  for  being 
our  ancestors  and  giving  us  the  chance  to  live;  we  may 
look  back  upon  their  lives  with  pity,  but  not  with  admira- 
tion. /  We  no  longer  reverence  the  ancients  because  they 
are  ancient.  To  have  lived  ten-thousand  years  ago  is  not 
an  advantage,  it  is  a  handicap.J 

Our  worship  is  not  for  our  ancestry,  but  for  our  posterity. 

'   Our  gods  are  not  dead,  they  are  yet  to  be  born.     Man  waits 

\S  to-day  for  superman  and  longs  for  the  manifestation  of  these 

'  sons  of  the  gods. 

Modern  religion  has  ascribed  a  separate  soul  to  each  indiv- 
idual of  the  household,  has  unified  these  souls,  not  in  the 
household  soul  but  in  a  greater  Oversoul,  who  has  no  regard 
for  family  ties.  All  the  great  leaders  of  modern  religion. 

f  Buddha,  Christ,  St.  Francis,  renounced  the  family  in  the 
interests  of  humanity.  Religion  to-day  has  shattered  the 
family  into  fragments;  it  has  set  the  father  against  the  son 
and  the  son  against  the  father,  the  daughter  against  the 
mother  and  the  mother  against  the  daughter;  it  has  freed 
the  wife  from  subjection  to  the  husband,  making  her  his 
equal  in  the  presence  of  the  gods. 

Political  influences  are  to-day  antagonistic  to  the  integrity 
of  the  family,  which  is  no  longer  the  unit  of  the  State.  The 
powers  of  the  State  have  invaded  the  household  and  de- 


22  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

stroyed  its  government;  the  House-Father  has  been  compelled 
to  abdicate;  the  law  of  the  State  has  superseded  the  law  of 
the  house ;  a  man  has  no  longer  the  ownership  of  his  wife 
or  his  children  or  his  servants;  these  are  all  the  free  citizens 
of  a  free  State. 

The  head  of  the  family  to-day  has  duties  but  no  privileges ; 
he  must  pay  the  debts  of  his  wife,  but  she  is  not  responsible 
for  his  obligations;  he  must  support  his  growing  children, 
but  they  owe  no  reciprocal  duty  to  his  declining  strength. 
Though  the  head  of  the  family  has  still  testamentary  right 
over  his  property,  every  day  sees  that  right  limited  more 
and  more  by  the  civil  law.  Primogeniture  and  entail  no 
longer  buttress  the  family,  except  in  England.  Income  and 
inheritance  taxes  assert  the  right  of  the  community  to  ap- 
propriate to  its  uses  the  family  wealth.  The  family  survives 
in  the  modern  world  a  mere  ghost  of  its  ancient  self;  having 
the  same  name,  but  not  being  the  same  thing. 

By  far  the  most  potent  of  all  the  enemies  of  the  family 
is  the  modern  system  of  industry,  which  has  taken  from 
the  family  its  occupation,  removed  its  hearth,  stilled  its 
wheels,  put  out  its  fires.  The  work  of  the  family  is  no 
longer  done  in  the  family,  by  the  family,  for  the  family; 
its  baking,  its  brewing,  its  spinning,  its  weaving,  its  sowing, 
and  its  reaping  are  not  the  work  of  the  family,  but  of  the 
community  upon  which  the  family  is  dependent.  Each  indi- 
vidual is  related,  economically,  not  to  the  family  but  to  the 
community.  The  boys  and  the  girls  must  go  out  of  the 
home  to  earn  their  living.  Household  religion  is  gone,  be- 
cause household  life  is  gone. 

The  gods  of  the  churches  have  broken  down  the  altars  of 
the  Manes,  the  gods  of  the  city  have  removed  the  gates  of 
the  Lares,  and  the  gods  of  industry  have  put  out  the  fires 
of  the  Penates  on  the  hearth. 


BOOK  II 
GODS  OF  THE  GREEK  DYNASTY 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  God  of  Space 

In  the  history  of  the  religious  life  of  the  Greeks  the  gods 
succeed  one  another,  after  the  manner  of  kings.  There  are 
divine  dynasties  as  well  as  human,  each  having  its  day,  then 
passing  away  to  give  room  to  its  successor ;  these  dynasties 
being  coeval  with  given  stages  in  the  industrial,  social,  and 
political  development  of  the  people. 

The  first  of  these  dynasties  is  that  of  the  god  known  to 
the  Greeks  as  Ouranos,  to  the  Latins  as  Uranus,  and  to  the 
Hindoos  as  Varuna.  This  god  had  little  or  no  influence  on 
the  life  of  the  Western  world  during  the  historic  period; 
for  the  Greeks  he  was  only  a  starting  point;  for  the  Latins 
nothing  but  a  name.  To  find  him  in  his  prime,  we  must  go 
back  to  the  time  when  the  Aryan  race  was  emerging  from 
middle  into  higher  barbarism  and  was  substituting  the  life 
of  the  shepherd  for  the  life  of  the  hunter.  In  thinking  of 
the  religions  of  Europe  we  must  remember  that  none  of  them 
is  indigenous  to  the  soil.  All  the  gods  worshipped  in  the 
Western  world  are  from  the  East,  because  the  races  of  men 
who  during  this  historic  period  have  inhabited  the  continent 
of  Europe  are  of  Eastern  origin.  Man  came  into  Europe 
from  the  East  and  brought  his  gods  with  him.  Middle  Asia 
is  the  birthplace  of  the  gods,  because  it  is  the  birthplace  of 
the  Aryan  and  Semitic  races. 

The  Aryan  people,  who  are  now  dominant  on  the  earth, 
developed  their  racial  character  on  the  northern  slope  of  the 
Persian  hills.  That  region  was  rich  in  pasture  land,  and 
man  soon  found  that  it  was  easier  to  get  his  meat  by  raising 
it  in  the  fields  than  by  hunting  for  it  in  the  forest;  so  from 
a  huntsman  he  became  a  herdsman  and  a  shepherd.  This 

25 


26  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

change  in  occupation  necessitated  changes  in  his  habits  of 
life  and  opened  up  to  him  new  vistas  of  thought.  Man's 
attitude  toward  the  beasts  became  defensive  as  well  as  of- 
fensive. He  discovered  that  many  animals  were  worth  more 
to  him  alive  than  dead:  the  living  cow  gave  him  milk  and 
butter  and  cheese  for  his  eating;  the  living  sheep  wool  for 
his  clothing.  It  was  a  great  step  towards  a  higher  life 
when  man,  in  his  own  interest,  began  to  assume  this  defen- 
sive attitude  toward  the  beasts  of  the  field.  This  bred  in 
him  a  feeling  of  affection  and  a  sense  of  responsibility.  The 
relation  of  the  shepherd  to  the  sheep  gave  rise  to  thoughts 
and  feelings  which  have  made  a  lasting  impression  on  the 
mind  and  heart  of  humanity.  The  shepherd  was  the  lord 
of  the  sheep,  and  his  relations  to  his  flock  were  symbolic 
to  him  of  his  relations  to  his  god.  The  best  a  shepherd  / 

/  could  say  of  his  god  was:  "The  Lord  is  my  Shepherd."  In 
that  saying  he  expressed  all  the  watchfulness,  all  the  anx-  / 
iety  that  he  exercised  and  that  beset  him  in  his  care  of 
his  sheep.  He  needed  his  sheep,  and  his  sheep  needed  him ; 
in  like  manner,  he  needed  his  god,  and  his  god  needed  him. 
The  shepherd  life  changed  the  relation  of  man  to  the  in- 
animate as  well  as  to  the  animate  world.  This  life  classified 
animals  as  domestic  and  wild,  as  the  friends  and  enemies  of 
man ;  it  distinguished  nature  as  heaven  and  earth,  the  one 
the  home  of  man,  the  other  region  of  the  gods,  the  one 
familiar  and  subject  to  man,  the  other  mysterious  and  be- 

.  yond  the  power  of  his  will.      Not  until  he  became  a  shepherd  1 

|  did  man  see  the  sky.  The  fetich  gods  of  the  savage  are 
all  of  the  earth, — stones  and  stocks  of  trees — it  is  only  as 
he  emerges  into  barbarism  and  has  domesticated  animals  and 
comes  out  of  the  gloom  of  the  cave  and  the  forest  into  the 
pasture  that  man  can  look  up  into  the  sky  and  can  find  in  it 
the  inspiration  of  his  hope  and  the  reason  of  his  fear. 

It   was    the    shepherds,    keeping    watch    over   their    flocks 

1  by  night,  to  whom  this  god  of  the  sky  was  first  revealed. 
It  was  in  the  night  that  they  saw  him  and  feared  and  wor- 
shipped him.  We  who  never  see  the  sky  at  night,  or,  seeing 
it,  feel  ourselves  in  no  near  relation  to  it;  we,  to  whom  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  27 

sky  is  infinite  space  in  which  whirl  infinite  worlds,  can  have 
no  notion  of  the  thoughts  of  the  primitive  shepherd,  as  he 
lay  upon  his  back,  looking  into  the  sky  on  the  hills  of 
Persia,  twenty-thousand  years  ago;  for  to  him  there  was 
no  sense  of  space  and  no  conception  of  the  infinite.  The  sky 
was  as  near  to  him  as  the  earth,  and  the  stars  were  not  so 
far  away  as  tops  of  the  mountains.  What  he  saw  in  the  sky  was 
not  the  mighty  play  of  impersonal  forces  but  the  action  of 
beings  like  himself,  having  body,  parts,  and  passions,  moved, 
as  he  was  moved,  by  love  and  hate,  by  hope  and  fear.  As 
he  watched  the  sky  through  the  long  night,  he  saw  it  move 
over  his  eye,  carrying  in  its  motion  the  moon  and  the  stars ; 
slowly  bringing  the  various  groups  of  stars  from  the  dark- 
ness of  the  east  and  dropping  them  one  by  one,  as  the  night 
went  on,  into  the  darkness  of  the  west.  The  primitive 
shepherd  knew  nothing  of  the  revolution  of  the  earth  on 
its  axis ;  indeed,  it  was  a  long  time  before  he  was  aware  that 
the  stars  were  the  same  stars  night  after  night  and  season 
after  season ;  he  saw  the  moon  from  a  rim  of  light  grow 
to  the  full  and  then  become  a  rim  of  light  again  and  go  out 
into  the  darkness,  and  it  was  always  a  new  moon  to  him. 

Out  of  these  thoughts  of  the  shepherd  was  the  god  Va- 
runa  made, — Varuna,  who  belongs  to  the  earliest  period  of 
Aryan  development,  to  the  pastoral  age,  just  as  it  was  suc- 
ceeding to  the  forest  age,  when  man  was  ceasing  to  be  a 
hunter  and  becoming  a  keeper  of  sheep. 

Then,  as  always,  man  reasoned  from  the  known  to  the 
unknown.  He  accounted  for  the  sky  by  ascribing  to  it  the 
attributes  of  his  own  nature.  The  sky  was  to  his  archaic 
mind  nothing  but  a  bigger  man ;  the  earth  was  his  wife,  and 
the  moon  and  the  stars  were  his  children.  Every  night  his 
children  were  born,  and  every  night,  as  fast  as  they  were 
born,  he  thrust  them  back  again  into  the  dark  places  of  the 
earth,  much  to  the  discomfort  of  his  long  suffering  wife. 

The  stories  told  of  Varuna, — or,  to  give  him  his  most 
familiar  name,  Uranus, — bear  the  impress  of  the  untutored 
mind  from  which  they  came.  In  that  early  time  man,  still 


28  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

a  savage,  was  savage  to  his  wife  and  children ;  for  he  learned  \ 
;  to  love  his  sheep  long  before  he  came  to  love  his  wife  and 
t    his  sons  and  his  daughters.      Domestic  tragedies  in  ancient 
times  were  not  exposed  in  the  law  courts,  they  were  enacted 
within  the  precincts  of  the  home;  the  wives  were  tortured, 
children  enslaved,  and  when  desperation  was  born  of  cruelty, 
husbands  and  fathers  were  killed. 

It  is  such  a  story  as  this  that  attaches  itself  to  the  god 
Varuna :  He  is  a  tyrant  in  the  home.  Gea  (the  Earth)  who 
is  his  wife,  outraged  both  as  a  wife  and  a  mother,  stirs  up 
her  children  to  rebellion;  one  of  whom,  at  her  instigation, 
mutilates  his  father  Sky  and  separates  him  forever  from  his 
mother  Earth ;  so  that  she  can  have  no  more  children  by  him. 
These  outre  stories  of  Uranus  and  Gea  reflect,  as  we  have 
learned,  the  state  of  the  savage  mind  that  gave  them  utter- 
ance and  the  conditions  of  savage  life  that  made  them  credible. 
We  must  remember  that  these  stories  were  believed  in  their 
day  as  firmly  as  we  believe  the  stories  told  us  in  our  churches ; 
for  Uranus  and  Gea  were  the  gods  of  the  shepherd  world 
as  surely  as  Jesus  and  Mary  are  the  divinities  of  the  Christian 
world. 

The  story  of  the  mutilation  of  Uranus  and  of  his  exile  from 
the  embraces  of  the  earth  come  naturally  at  the  end  and  not 
at  the  beginning  of  his  reign  as  a  god.  In  the  mythology 
of  the  East  we  find  him  recorded  as  the  chief  god  of  the 
Aryan  people.  In  his  worship  of  Uranus  the  Aryan  mas- 
tered the  conception  of  space.  The  name  of  this  god  in 
the  Sanscrit  means  "extension,"  "spread  out."  In  looking 
at  the  sky  man  discovered  that,  while  he  could  see  it  with  his 
eye,  he  could  not  reach  it  with  his  hand;  thus  he  became 
aware  of  a  world  beyond  his  finger-tips,  and  the  sense  of  dis- 
tance was  acquired,  while  "far"  and  "near"  became  thought 
in  the  human  mind.  The  sense  of  space  never  came  before 
the  experience  of  space;  it  is  an  acquisition  made  in  space 
itself.  When  first  born  we  do  not  have  it;  since  as  children 
we  cry  for  the  moon.  "Far"  and  "near"  at  first  are  only 
"big"  and  "little"  to  us.  Yet  we  come  to  the  knowledge 
of  space  so  early  that  we  think  we  have  always  had  it ;  and 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  29 

only  by  experimenting  with  the  very  young  are  we  able  to 
convince  ourselves  that  once  we  thought  that  all  the  world 
was  well  within  our  reach. 

It  was  this  growing  sense  of  distance  that  caused  the  de- 
cline of  the  power  of  the  god  Uranus.  Men  came  to  see  that 
the  stars  were  farther  away  than  the  tops  of  the  mountains. 
Little  by  little  the  sky  has  receded  from  the  earth.  At 
first  Earth  and  Sky  embraced  at  the  horizon,  and  one  had 
but  to  walk  to  the  edge  of  the  earth  to  lay  his  hand  on  the 
rainbow.  Night  after  night  the  Sky  came  down  and  lay 
with  the  Earth  in  the  darkness.  Then  the  Sky  was  lifted 
until  it  was  just  beyond  the  tops  of  the  mountains,  and  Olym- 
pus was  the  stepping-stone  from  Earth  to  heaven.  But 
later  the  sky  was  withdrawn  above  the  clouds,  and  the  gods 
were  miles  away,  sitting  upon  the  circle  of  the  heavens. 

But  not  until  Giordano  Bruno  lifted  up  his  eyes  did  man 
see  infinite  space  as  the  home  of  infinite  worlds.  We  never 
stop  to  think  how  recent  our  conception  of  the  sky  is,  how 
absent  this  notion  was  from  the  mind  of  man  through  all 
the  ages  down  to  the  present,  nor  how  difficult  it  is  even  for 
us  to  entertain  this  thought  and  give  it  reality. 

The  great  mass  of  people  never  think  of  the  sky  as  far, 
far  away,  it  is  always  very  near  to  them,  and  still  the  home 
of  their  god.  Uranus,  though  he  had  very  little  to  do  with 
the  development  of  the  life  of  the  Aryan  people  after  their 
migration  into  Europe,  was  not  lost  to  them.  The  stories 
that  were  told  to  his  discredit  were  gradually  either  explained 
away  or  forgotten.  In  the  Greek  language  he  gave  his  name 
to  the  sky  and  to  this  day  we  are  compelled  to  think  of  him 
when  we  tell  of  One  who  came  preaching  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  for  is  not  this  in  the  Greek,  'H  ^aacXeia  TOU  Oupavou  — 
the  kingdom  of  Uranus? 

We  still  look  to  the  sky  in  hope  and  fear ;  from  it  comes 
the  light  of  our  eyes ;  from  it  falls  the  early  and  the  later 
rain;  from  it  the  great  god  Uranus  still  sends  down  his  snow 
like  wool  and  scatters  his  hoarfrost  like  ashes ;  out  of  it  come 
lightning-flashes  of  wrath  and  rolling  thunders  of  displeas- 


30  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

ure;  in  it  are  gendered  the  tempests  that  uproot  the  trees  of 
the  forests;  from  it  fall  the  waters  that  flood  the  earth  when 
the  windows  of  heaven  are  opened. 

The  shepherd  on  the  Aryan  hills,  in  his  worship  of  the  sky, 
has  made  us  forever  his  debtors ;  for  in  his  crude  imaginations 
we  have  the  beginning  of  astronomy,  and  the  seed-thoughts 
of  theology  and  philosophy.  Uranus,  the  god  of  the  shepherds 
of  the  East,  is  still  the  greatest  of  gods ;  in  him  are  all  poten- 
tialities, out  of  him  all  worlds  are  born,  into  him  all  worlds  die. 
He  is  the  maker  of  the  day  and  the  keeper  of  the  night. 
V  Darkness  and  Light  to  him  are  both  alike. ) 

It  is  our  misfortune  that  we  seldom  or  never  see  him. 
With  the  shepherd  life  has  gone  the  shepherd's  intimacy  with 
Uranus.  Having  no  occasion  to  watch,  we  never  wake  to 
see  the  heavens  as  they  manifest  the  glory  of  their  God. 
What  man  of  us  has  ever  lain  awake  all  night  and  watched 
the  Great  Bear  go  down  into  the  darkness  below  the  horizon ; 
who  of  us  has  seen  the  Moon  gliding  in  and  out  among  the 
stars,  hastening  across  the  sky,  like  some  lovelorn  maiden  to 
her  tryst,  until  she  has  become  to  us  the  symbol  of  the  mis- 
tress of  our  heart,  to  whom  we  liken  her? — saying  of  that 
mistress: 

Your  darksome  hair  up-gathered   from 

Your  thoughtful  brow. 

Is  like  the  wreathed  cloud  above  the  Moon 

Which  all  night  long  as  she  her  stately 
journey  makes  among  the  stars, 

Follows  after, 

Shadowing  her  way. 

Who  of  us  has  ever  seen  the  storm  gather  and  the  rain 
fall,  as  the  grey  cloud  follows  the  black?  House-dwellers 
that  we  are,  blinded  by  the  daylight,  revelling  or  sleeping  by 
night! — we  never  know  the  beauty  nor  the  terror  of  Uranus, 
who  dwells  in  the  light  unapproachable  and  broods  in  the 
impenetrable  darkness. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  31 

CHAPTER   VII 

The  God  of  Time 

Chronos,  the  god  who  mutilated  and  deposed  Uranus,  was 
not  of  Aryan  origin,  nor  is  there  any  trace  of  him  in  the 
religious  life  of  the  Aryan  people  until  after  their  migration 
into  Europe  and  their  settlement  in  the  peninsulas  of  Greece 
and  Italy.  His  history  is  obscure,  and  the  etymology  of  his 
name  uncertain.  Because  his  cult  prevailed  over  the  cult 
of  Uranus,  he  was  under  the  law  of  succession,  held  by  the 
early  mvthologists  to  be  the  son  of  the  god  who  preceded 
him ;  but  this  relationship  cannot  be  established.  Chronos 
intrudes  himself  between  Uranus  and  Zeus,  who  are  both 
Aryan  gods  and,  according  to  the  laws  of  mythology  stand 
in  the  relation  of  father  and  son. 

We  can  account  for  Chronos  only  by  the  conjecture  that 
he  was  god  of  the  people  who  were  in  possession  of  the  land 
at  the  time  of  the  first  migration  of  the  Aryan  tribes  into 
Southern  Europe.  These  people  were  of  Semitic  stock,  com- 
ing from  Syria  and  the  regions  south  and  east  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean Sea;  but  whatever  their  origin,  they  had  established 
a  mode  of  life  based  upon  agriculture  as  the  chief  source  of 
their  food  supply.  The  rich,  contracted  valleys  of  Greece 
and  Italy,  with  their  abundance  of  sunshine  and  rain,  made 
those  countries  almost  of  necessity  farming  countries.  The 
live  stock  was  no  longer  the  main  source  of  wealth ;  the 
cattle  and  the  sheep  being  subordinated  in  this  agricultural 
system,  to  the  field  and  the  orchard ;  for  the  land  was  too 
limited  and  too  valuable  to  be  put  into  pasture.  The  corn 
and  the  vine  and  the  olive  gave  man  bread  and  oil  and  wine, 
and  these,  in  that  semi-tropical  climate,  were  more  whole- 
some as  food  than  was  the  flesh  of  animals.  Animal  food, 
of  course,  had  its  place  in  the  economy  of  this  people,  but, 
as  in  all  tropical  and  semi-tropical  countries,  it  was  con- 
sidered less  essential  than  a  vegetable  and  fruit  diet.y 

In  this  region  religion  was  rustic  in  its  character,  and  had 
to  do  with  sowing  and  reaping  and  gathering  into  barns. 


32  THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

Of  this  religion  Chronos  was,  undoubtedly,  the  chief  deity 
at  the  time  of  the  Aryan  migration. 

Chronos  was  a  god  of  vegetation.  His  sign  was  the  sickle, 
which  he  used  to  mutilate  Uranus;  his  principal  festivals 
were  at  the  Spring  and  the  Autumnal  equinox,  and  if  human 
sacrifices  were  offered  to  him,  that  rite  was  but  a  survival 
from  savage  times  and  indicative  of  the  thought  that  the 
blood  and  sweat  of  man  must  be  given  to  the  soil,  if  the  soil 
were  expected  to  yield  of  its  life  to  the  service  of  man.  That 
he  was  the  god  of  the  farmer  is  evident  from  the  fact  that 
the  Romans  recognized  him  as  the  prototype  of  their  god 
Saturn,  who  was  the  god  of  the  rustic,  presiding  over  the 
industries  and  securing,  by  his  favor,  the  prosperity  of  the 
farmer. 

At  the  time  of  the  Aryan  invasion  these  southern  farmers 
were  farther  along  in  the  course  of  human  evolution  than 
were  their  northern  conquerors.  The  agricultural  life  has 
in  it  more  educational  possibilities  than  the  pastoral ;  since 
the  agricultural  life  is  a  settled  life,  which  gives  more  time 
for  thought  than  does  a  roaming  one.  A  farmer  must  neces- 
sarily be  a  more  or  less  close  observer  of  the  courses  of 
nature ;  he  must  be  weather-wise ;  must  adapt  himself  to 
times  and  seasons.  His  life  is  governed  by  sequences.  He 
must  sow,  and  then  he  must  wait  for  the  harvest  before  he 
can  reap.  This  mode  of  life  makes  a  man  conscious  of  what 
we  call  "time." 

The  sense  of  time  is  so  instinctive  with  us,  after  we  reach 
consciousness,  that  we  think  of  it  as  intuitive  rather  than 
experimental, — a  form  of  thought  antecedent  to  experience 
rather  than  a  view  of  the  world  acquired  by  experience.  This 
relation  of  the  sense  of  time  to  the  nature  of  man  has  been, 
is,  and  always  will  be  the  bone  of  contention  with  philosoph- 
ers. The  schools  of  Locke  and  Kant  will  dispute  till  the 
end  of  time  as  to  whether  time  is  an  inborn  faculty  or  is 
dependent  on  experience  and  education.  That  the  sense  of 
time  is  from  experience  we  may  infer  from  the  fact  that 
young  children  have  little  or  no  sense  of  time  and  very  aged 
men  lose  such  sense  entirelv. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  33 

The  order  of  nature  separates  time  into  periods  of  light 
and  dark,  following  one  another  in  regular  sequence.  The 
shadows  slowly  shortening  to  the  westward  until  the  mer- 
idian, and  then  as  slowly  lengthening  to  the  eastward  until 
the  sunset  must  have  suggested  to  man  the  sundial  and  the 
division  of  time  into  morning  and  evening,  as  well  as  into 
day  and  night.  But  even  so  simple  an  instrument  for  the 
marking  of  time  was  not  possible  until  man's  life  was  reg- 
ulated into  periods  of  work  and  rest.  It  is  the  plowman, 
not  the  hunter  nor  the  herdsman,  who  watches  the  after- 
noon shadows  grow  longer,  for  the  reason  that  the  length- 
ening shadows  mean  to  him  cessation  from  toil.  The  occupa- 
tion of  the  hunter  or  the  herdsman  may  be  dangerous  or 
tedious,  but  is  not  toilsome.  Time  and  toil  became  associated 
in  the  mind  of  man  when  he  put  his  hand  to  the  plow  and 
the  hoe,  the  sickle  and  the  flail,  and  began  to  work  at  a  daily 
task  for  so  many  hours  a  day.  Not  until  man  went  forth 
to  his  work  and  to  his  labor  until  the  evening  did  the  evening 
mean  anything  to  him.  It  was  on  the  farm  that  the  sense 
of  time  was  fully  developed. 

We  also  owe  to  agriculture  the  division  of  time  into 
months  and  years.  We  have  calendars  to  tell  us  the  name 
of  the  day  and  the  name  of  the  month,  yet  we  give  no 
thought  to  the  marvel  of  that  simple  contrivance ;  never  con- 
sider how  impossible  it  would  be  to  order  our  lives  if  the 
!  days  and  the  months  had  no  names ;  hardly  meditate  on  the 
fact  that  there  was  a  time  when  the  articulate  calendar  had 
no  existence  and  men  had  to  be  satisfied  with  the  broad  dis- 
tinction of  day  and  night,  seedtime  and  harvest,  summer  and 
winter. 

The  division  of  time  is  religious  in  its  origin.  So  won- 
derful is  this  division  that  men  have  always  ascribed  it  to 
their  gods.  New  moons  and  sabbaths  are  holy  unto  the 
Lord,  f 

It  was  during  the  early  agricultural  period  that  the  founda- 
tions of  Chronology  were  laid ;  great  religious  festivals  mark 
the  seasons.  The  lives  of  the  gods  are  manifest  in  the 
phenomena  of  vegetation.  The  god  is  forever  dying  and 


34  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

forever  coming  into  life  again.  Buried  in  the  ground  and 
left  to  rot,  he  rises  from  the  ground  into  newness  of  life 
and  brings  joy  to  a  desolate  earth.  The  annual  renewal  of 
life  in  the  vegetable  world  deeply  impressed  the  mind  of  the 
primitive  farmer;  for  to  him  it  was  a  manifestation  of  the 
great  mystery  in  which  was  concealed  the  life  and  the  pur- 
pose of  his  god.  \It  was  his  god  who  blossomed  and  fruited 
in  the  summer,  his  god  who  died  and  went  down  into  dark- 
ness in  the  winter,  and  rose  again  from  the  dead  in  the 
springtime.  ) 

Of  this  religion  of  the  fields  Chronos  was  the  ruling  deity 
when  it  came  in  conflict  with  the  religion  of  the  migrating 
Aryan  shepherds  and  herdsmen,  who  worshipped  Uranus, 
the  god  of  the  pasture.  These  hardy  men  from  the  North 
found  no  difficulty  in  making  a  conquest  of  these  farmers  of 
the  South,  taking  from  them  their  lands  and  reducing  them 
to  slavery.  But  while  they  could  subdue  the  men,  they 
could  not  displace  the  god  of  the  country.  It  was  not  possible 
to  live  the  pastoral  life  in  the  contracted  valleys  of  Greece 
and  Italy.  Agriculture  offered  an  easier  way  to  obtain  a 
richer  living.  The  conquerors  of  the  land  became  the  owners 
of  the  land,  while  the  people  of  the  land  as  slaves  cultivated 
the  land,  the  masters  reaping  the  fruits  of  their  labor.  This 
is  no  speculation,  it  is  a  grim  fact  that  has  been  repeated  over 
and  over  again  in  the  history  of  the  world.  After  a  conflict 
more  or  less  severe  and  prolonged  between  the  agricultural 
and  the  pastoral  mode  of  life  the  agricultural  prevailed. 
Uranus,  the  god  of  the  pasture,  was  dethroned  and  banished, 
and  Chronos,  the  god  of  the  fenced  field,  reigned  in  his 
stead. 

During  the  reign  of  Chronos  the  institution  of  the  family 
came  to  its  perfection.  During  this  period  the  family  based 
upon  the  land,  rooted  in  the  soil,  was  consecrated  by  the  lapse 
of  time.  Each  landholder  was  lord  and  master  within  his 
holding,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  oldest  living  agnate. 
Chronos  did  not  supplant  the  household  gods  of  the  Aryan 
people;  he  merely  supplemented  them.  As  the  god  of  veget- 
ation he  was  the  common  god  of  all  the  farmers,  and  the  cele- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  35 

bration  of  his  festivals  promoted  a  community  spirit  that 
tended  to  modify  the  selfishness  of  family  life. 

The  stories  that  are  told  of  Chronos  illustrate  the  rudeness 
and  the  cruelty  of  that  early  period  of  human  history.  His 
fear  of  his  children,  his  disregard  of  his  wife,  his  consuming 
ambition  to  live  and  rule  are  characteristic  of  the  man  of  the 
time  in  whose  image  this  god  was  made. 

The  story  of  Chronos  is  the  story  of  man's  mastery  not 
I  only  of  the  earth  but  of  the  sky.  He  was  the  youngest  of 
the  Titans, — those  fierce  children  of  Uranus  and  Gea  who 
rage  in  the  air,  over  land  and  sea.  The  destructive  forces 
of  the  wind  and  rain  were,  in  the  person  of  Chronos,  subdued 
to  the  uses  of  man ;  he  was  the  wind  blowing,  not  as  a  gale 
but  as  a  breeze ;  the  water  falling,  not  in  floods  but  in  showers. 
He  was  the  incarnation  of  the  growing  intelligence  of  man 
getting  the  best  of  the  non-intelligent  forces  of  nature.  Aris- 
totle and  other  Greek  writers  traced  the  name  of  the  god 
of  the  field  to  chronos,  the  Greek  word  for  "time,"  but  modern 
philologists  dispute  this,  and  refer  the  name~to  the  root  from 
which  we  have  the  verb  chronizo,  which  means,  "to  do,"  "to 
accomplish." 

It  matters  not  which  of  these  derivations  is  correct,  or 
whether  both  of  them  are  true,  the  name  of  Chronos  will  be 
forever  associated  in  the  mind  of  man  with  the  thought  of 
time.  He  is  the  Ancient  of  days ;  the  Keeper  of  the  Golden 
Years.  The  treasures  of  the  past  are  his,  and  all  we  can 
say  of  the  future  is  that  "Time  will  tell."  T 


CHAPTER    VIII 

The  City  God 

The  story  of  the  dethronement  and  banishment  of  Chronos 
by  Zeus  is,  with  some  minor  differences,  a  repetition  of  the 
story  of  the  treatment  of  Uranus  by  Chronos.  Having  been 


36  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

told  that  he  is  doomed  to  be  dethroned  and  exiled  by  one 
of  his  children,  Chronos  strives  to  cheat  his  destiny  by  swal- 
lowing his  children  as  fast  as  they  are  born.  Rhea,  his  wife, 
does  not  approve  of  this  method  of  disposing  of  her  offspring, 
so  when  Zeus  is  born  she  hides  him  in  a  cave  in  Mount  Ida, 
and  gives  old  Chronos  a  stone  to  swallow  in  the  place  of  his 
son.  Zeus,  growing  rapidly  to  manhood,  rises  in  rebellion 
against  his  father  Chronos,  compels  his  sire  to  disgorge  first 
the  stone  (which  is  ever  after  sacred),  then,  one  after  another, 
Poseidon,  Hades,  and  Hera,  the  brothers  and  sister  of  Zeus, 
who  seem  none  the  worse  for  having  dwelt  so  long  in  the 
interior  of  their  father.  Zeus,  having  driven  Chronos  into 
the  remote  parts  of  the  earth,  organizes  his  brothers  and 
sister  into  a  heavenly  hierarchy,  begets  gods  and  goddesses 
and  divine  men  and  women  innumerable,  and  reigns  as  chief 
deity  over  the  destinies  of  the  Hellenic  people  during  the 
whole  of  their  historic  existence.  Long  before  Zeus  had 
ceased  to  be  worshipped  as  a  god,  the  Greeks  had  lost  their 
place  and  power  in  the  world. 

The  true  history  of  Zeus,  as  of  all  the  gods,  is  not  written 
by  the  poets  in  the  sacred  books,  but  is  to  be  deciphered  by 
the  critical  faculty  in  the  life  and  language  of  the  people. 
Zeus,  an  Aryan  god  of  the  purest  blood,  was  not  born,  as 
the  poets  say,  on  Mount  Ida;  he  had  his  beginning  on  that 
great  watershed  of  gods  and  men,  the  northern  slope  of  the 
Persian  hills.  The  root  of  his  name  has  produced  the  greatest 
words  that  have  ever  been  spoken  by  Aryan  men;  for  from 
that  root  has  come  such  words  as  "day,"  "dawn,"  and  "div- 
inity." 

Zeus,  before  he  became  the  reigning  god  of  the  last  Greek 
dynasty,  was  known  to  his  worshippers  as  Dyaus,  the  root  of 
his  name  was  div  or  duy,  which  is  the  root  of  all  the  words  that 
we  use  at  the  present  time  in  connection  with  the  day. 

Dyaus,  in  Aryan  mythology,  was  second  only  to  Uranus 
or  Varuna.  Varuna  was  the  god  of  the  sky  as  the  shepherds 
saw  it  at  night;  Dyaus  was  the  god  of  the  bright  sky  in 
its  morning  glow  and  noonday  splendor.  The  root  idea 
of  the  name  Dyaus  is  brightness,  the  gleam  of  gold  and 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  37 

the  splendor  of  brass.  This  god  presided  over  the  life  of 
man  during  his  hours  of  activity.  He  was  not  as  Varuna, 
the  god  of  mystery,  breeding  fear  in  the  darkness;  he  was 
the  god  of  the  daylight,  making  all  things  clear  to  the  eye 
of  man.  During  the  hours  of  Dyaus,  the  work  of  life  was 
done ;  the  cows  were  milked  and  driven  to  pasture ;  the 
fields  were  ploughed ;  the  seed  was  sown ;  the  harvest  was 
reaped.  Within  the  house  the  women  baked  the  bread, 
spun  the  thread,  weaved  the  cloth,  and  made  the  garments 
for  the  use  of  the  household.  Of  all  the  gods  there  was 
none  greater  than  Dyaus  the  god  of  the  daylight,  who  filled 
the  heavens  and  flooded  the  earth  with  his  glory. 

This  god  became  more  and  more  powerful  in  proportion 
as  man  employed  the  daylight  to  study  and  improve  his 
manner  of  living.  It  was  under  his  guidance  that  man 
passed  from  higher  barbarism  into  civilization.  Thus  is  Zeus 
the  god  of  civilization,  expressing  the  thoughts  and  feelings 
that  have  dominated  the  civilized  man  from  the  earliest 
period  of  reclamation  from  savagery  down  to  the  present. 

In  the  early  days  of  Dyaus  human  society  was  organizing 
itself  along  the  lines  it  has  followed  ever  since.  The  family, 
with  its  subjection  of  women  and  enslavement  of  the  work- 
ing class,  was  in  process  of  establishment:  the  leisure  class 
was  developing.  The  heads  of  families, — the  masters  of 
women,  children,  and  slaves, — lived  upon  the  labor  of  these 
subject  classes.  Labor  was  falling  into  disrepute,  to  escape 
from  the  necessity  of  labor  was  becoming  the  ruling  ambi- 
tion. No  longer  were  the  heads  of  families  shepherds,  or 
farmers,  or  woodmen.  Organizing  unconsciously  for  mutual 
profit,  they  built  for  themselves  cities  and  established  the 
state,  of  which  they  were  the  rulers,  the  statesmen,  the  politi- 
cians. Fighting  was  no  longer  left  to  the  impulses  of  the 
people ;  it  was  organized  into  war.  The  soldier  was  gradu- 
ally differentiated  from  the  industrial  worker;  and  the  heads 
of  families  and  their  sons  were  the  captains  of  the  armed 
force  that  defended  the  city  from  without  and  held  in  sub- 
jection the  slave  population  within.  Having  mastered  the 
process  of  smelting  iron,  man  had  a  sword  for  his  hand, 


38  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

a  sharpened  tip  for  his  spear,  and  thus  were  the  bow  and 
arrow,  in  a  measure,  discarded.  Fighting  was  reduced  to  a 
science ;  war  was  practiced  as  an  art. 

These  conditions  of  civilization  were  far  advanced  when 
the  second  great  Aryan  invasion  swept  down  over  southern 
Europe.  The  earlier  Aryan  emigrants  had  forgotten  their 
fatherland,  had  mingled  their  blood  with  the  Semite  and  the 
Basque,  and  worshipped  not  the  gods  of  their  Aryan  fathers 
but  the  gods  of  the  country  in  which  they  lived,  when  these, 
their  younger  brothers,  came  down  upon  them,  took  from 
them  their  lands,  dethroned  their  gods,  and  enslaved  their 
persons. 

This  later  migration  of  the  Aryans  was  not  tribal,  it  was 
clannish.  The  clan  (the  tribe  was  antecedent,  the  clan  pos- 
terior to  the  family)  was  a  cluster  of  consanguine  families 
moving  as  a  body  to  seek  for  themselves  new  and  better  land ; 
their  purpose  was  conquest  and  settlement.  These  emigrants 
brought  with  them  their  customs  and  institutions, — political 
and  religious, — which  they  substituted  for  those  already  ex- 
isting in  the  territory  that  they  conquered  and  appropriated. 
European  civilization  is  Aryan  because  Aryan  men  brought 
the  elements  of  that  civilization  with  them  and  planted  it 
in  Europe ;  for  the  same  reason  American  civilization  is 
European. 

The  principle  of  that  early  civilization  was  the  ownership 
of  land  in  severalty  by  the  family,  the  subjection  of  all  the 
members  of  the  family  to  the  House-Father,  the  enslavement 
of  the  working  class,  and  the  exaltation  of  property  as  the 
end  and  aim  of  the  social  organization.  Property  in  the 
sources  of  wealth  and  property  in  the  labor  of  men  became, 
by  the  processes  of  civilization,  the  privilege  of  the  few  and 
the  poverty  of  the  many. 

The  religion  of  this  early  ruling  class  expressed  itself  in 
the  worship  of  light  and  power,  or  rather  of  light  as  power. 
The  powerful  man  in  an  organized  society  is  the  intelligent 
man,  the  man  who  sees.  V  Napoleon  is  physically  the  least 
of  the  soldiers  of  France,  intellectually  he  commands  them  all. 

Zeus  is  the  god  of  the  social  order,  because  he  is  the  god 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  39 

of  light  as  power.  He  is  the  one  who  sees  what  is  to  be 
done,  and  does  it.  'The  Aryan  man  has  from  the  beginning 
worshipped  this  god  of  light  as  power,  and  his  god  has  given 
him.  dominion  in  the  earth./ 

Historically  Zeus  presided  over  the  beginnings  of  Western 
civilization.  He  was  the  greatest  of  the  city  or  political 
gods  who,  in  the  worship  of  mankind,  succeeded  the  family 
gods  and  the  nature  gods.  It  is  true  that  Zeus  never  became 
the  city  god  of  any  particular  city;  but  that  was  because  he 
was  the  common  god  of  all  the  cities  of  Greece.  In  him 
Grecian  civilization  was  unified.  To  find  him  as  a  city  god 
pure  and  simple,  we  must  go  westward  into  Italy  and  study 
his  character  as  he  presided  over  the  greatest  of  the  city 
states  from  its  foundation  to  its  fall. 

The  titular  god  of  the  city  of  Rome  was  Jupiter  Capitolinus. 
Now  "Jupiter"  is  none  other  than  "Zeus-piter"1  or  "Zeus- 
father."  He  centers  in  himself  the  attributes  of  the  nature 
gods  and  the  household  gods ;  as  a  nature  god  he  is  Jupiter 
Pluvius  and  Jupiter  Tonans,  having  command  of  the  rain 
and  being  the  maker  of  the  thunder, — as  Jupiter  Capitolinus, 
he  has  the  guardianship  of  the  city. 

City  life  in  the  ancient  worlds  was  simply  the  enlargement 
of  domestic  life,  and  was  essentially  religious  in  its  constitu- 
tion. Each  city  was  in  the  keeping  of  the  city  gods.  It 
was  the  duty  of  these  gods  to  protect  their  city  against  the 
gods  of  other  cities.  Each  city,  like  each  household,  had 
its  own  divinities  who  cared  only  for  the  welfare  of  their 
particular  community  and  were  hostile  to  all  others.  Each 
god  must  fight  for  his  own  against  all  comers.  Religion  i 
in  those  days,  as  always,  was  a  principle  not  of  unity  but  of 
separation.  There  were  gods  many  and  lords  many  in  com- 
petition for  the  worship  of  men,  and  nothing  was  more  de- 
lightful to  a  god  than  to  have  his  worshippers  go  out 
against  the  worshippers  of  other  gods  and  beat  them  on 
the  field  of  battle.  It  was  religion  that  gave  intensity  to 
ancient  city  life  and  made  patriotism  a  sacred  duty.  The 

1  Piter  or  phiter,  the  Aryan  word  for  "father." 


40  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

separation  of  religion  from  politics  would  have  seemed  an 
unpardonable  sin  to  the  citizen  of  the  ancient  city  state, — the 
last  blasphemy  of  the  gods,  their  exclusion  from  their  rightful 
place  in  the  economy  of  the  state.  These  divine  beings 
were  as  much  a  part  of  the  life  of  the  city  as  were  the  men 
and  women  who  thronged  its  streets;  without  them  nothing 
could  be  done.  All  the  business  of  the  state  was  sacred, 
because  it  was  transacted  in  the  presence  and  under  the 
guidance  of  the  city  gods.  The  priests  of  the  gods  were 
the  magistrates  of  the  city,  leading  its  armies  and  making 
its  laws.  In  the  earlier  period  of  city  life,  as  in  the  earlier 
period  of  the  family  life,  the  head  of  the  city,  like  the  head 
of  the  house,  was  pontifex  maximus, — high  priest  of  the  city 
religion.  Our  division  into  Church  and  State  was  unknown 
to  the  ancient  world ;  for  at  that  time  the  state  was  the  church 
and  the  church  was  the  state.  , 

The  gods  were  so  intimate  to  the  life  of  the  city  that  the 
fortune  of  the  one  was  the  fortune  of  the  other.  When 
the  city  was  taken  the  gods  were  dethroned, — the  ancient  city 
gods  passing  away  with  the  civilization  of  the  ancient  city 
state  over  which  they  presided. 


CHAPTER  IX 

\ 

The  Gods  of  the  Leisure  Class 

The  Olympian  gods,  of  whom  Zeus  was  the  primate,  were 
essentially  the  gods  of  the  ruling,  leisure  class,  for  the  benefit 
of  which  class  civilization  exists.  The  great  mass  of  the 
people  have  from  the  beginning  had  little  or  no  share  in  the 
benefits  that  have  come  from  the  political  organization  of 
society.  The  ruling  classes,  being  at  the  place  of  advantage, 
have  always  appropriated  the  wealth  that  has  been  created 
by  the  organization.  The  laboring  classes  have  always  been 
the  lower  classes,  supporting  civilization  as  an  underground 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  41 

foundation,  but  having  no  share  in  the  security,  the  light, 
and  the  beauty  of  the  superstructure.  Whether  as  the  slaves 
of  the  ancient  world,  the  peasant  serfs  of  the  middle  age, 
or  the  wage-worker  of  the  modern  world,  this  class  has  always 
been  without  the  pale  of  society.  It  serves  but  it  does  not 
sit  at  the  social  table.  It  is  questionable  whether  the  process 
of  civilization  has  not  been  for  the  hurt  rather  than  to  the 
advantage  of  mankind  as  a  whole. 

The  right  to  leisure,  which  is  necessary  to  the  development 
and  enjoyment  of  life,  has  been  appropriated  by  one  class 
.and  denied  to  the  other.  The  very  name  "working  class" 
•  is  significant.  It  has  always  been  the  ambition  of  man  to 
get  rid  of  the  necessity  of  working  for  his  living.  The  savage 
laid  upon  the  woman  the  labor  of  the  field  and  the  house, 
keeping  for  himself  the  lighter,  more  leisurely  occupation 
of  hunting  and  fishing,  and  the  excitement  of  war.  Civilized 
man  has  exploited  the  uncivilized  elements  of  humanity  and 
lived  upon  the  fruits  of  their  labor.  The  ruling  class  has 
for  the  working  class  feelings  of  indifference,  contempt,  and 
hatred.  As  long  as  the  working  class  is  submissive,  patient, 
and  willing,  the  ruling  class  has  for  it  indifference  and  scorn ; 
when  it  is  restive  and  rebellious,  hatred  born  of  fear.  \\ 

This  relation  of  the  classes  was  more  explicit  in  the  ancient 
civilization  than  it  is  in  the  mbdern.  In  the  ancient  civiliza- 
tion this  relation  was  the  expression  of  a  religious  principle: 
the  gods  were  the  gods  of  the  master  class;  the  subjection  of 
the  women  and  the  children  and  the  slaves  was  divinely  order- 
ed; he  who  rebelled  against  that  order  rebelled  against  the 
gods. 

All  the  characteristics  of  civilized  man  are  seen  in  the  lives 
of  the  Olympian  gods.  The  cultivated  intelligence,  the  grow- 
ing sense  of  beauty  and  order,  the  desire  for  cleanliness,  the 
love  of  freedom,  the  self-assertion,  the  religiosity,  the  rapacity, 
the  callousness,  the  contempt  for  poverty  and  weakness,  the 
insatiable  appetite  for  pleasure,  the  disregard  of  the  moral 
order,  the  imperviousness  to  ideas,  which  have  been  from  the 
first  the  characteristics  of  the  ruling  class  of  the  Aryan,  were 
also  the  salient  features  of  the  gods  whom  he  worshipped. ,' 


42  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

The  Aryan  man  of  the  ancient  state  had  the  advantage  of 
his  descendant  in  the  modern  world, — he  had  not  come  under 
the  bondage  of  an  alien  religion.  His  religion  and  his  life 
were  both  of  a  piece.  If  he  pursued  a  maiden  for  her  beauty, 
was  not  Zeus  known  far  and  wide  for  his  amours?  If  he  tor- 
tured a  slave  for  thinking  of  freedom,  did  not  Zeus,  for  the 
same  offense,  chain  Prometheus  to  the  crag?  If  he  ran  away 
with  his  neighbor's  wife,  was  not  that  the  favorite  sport  of  the 
gods  of  Olympus?  If  he  went  out  on  a  foray  and  brought 
back  as  spoils  the  goods  and  the  souls  of  his  enemy,  did  he 
not  enrich  his  god  and  impoverish  the  god  of  his  defeated 
foe?  \We  find  the  character  of  Zeus  manifested  in  all  the 
men  whom  the  Aryan  race  has  loved  most  to  honor.  He 
is  the  prototype  of  Alexander,  of  Caesar,  and  of  Napoleon ; 
his  court  rivals  in  splendor  and  in  license  the  court  of  Louis 
XIV  before  the  days  of  Maintenon ;  he  patronizes  the  arts 
and  the  sciences,  with  all  the  liberality  of  Lorenzo  the  Mag- 
nificent. \\ 

These  gods  of  the  leisure  class  were  the  promoters  of 
science,  the  patrons  of  art,  the  protectors  of  letters,  and  the 
upholders  of  religion.  When  we  think  of  what  they  and 
their  worshippers  have  accomplished  for  humanity,  we  are 
compelled  to  acknowledge  that  they  are  worth  the  price  that 
mankind  has  paid  for  their  services.  Without  the  leisure  class 
and  their  gods  man  would  not  be  the  master  of  life  that  he  is. 
It  is  not  work  but  leisure,  not  restraint  but  freedom,  that  has 
enabled  him  to  evolve  those  higher  faculties  that  express  them- 
selves in  science  and  art,  in  letters  and  in  organized  religion. 
The  gods  of  the  leisure  class  are  not  poets,  but  they  patronize 
poetry;  they  pay  blind  Homers  in  pennies  to  sing  of  them  in 
the  halls  of  their  devotees ;  nor  are  these  gods  prophets,  but 
they  are  the  unfailing  support  of  the  priests,  who  live  in  their 
temples  and  eat  of  their  sacrifices..! 

The  gods  of  the  Greek  dynasty  are  the  gods  of  the  intel- 
ligence but,  with  one  exception,  not  the  gods  of  pure  reason. 
Both  they  and  their  worshippers  are  hostile  to  originality. 
In  the  course  of  its  history  the  Greek  people  produced  two 
men  of  the  highest  order  of  genius  in  the  region  of  pure  reason, 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  43 

but  neither  of  these  men  was  in  favor  with  the  ruling  class: 
/,  Socrates,  the  greater  of  the  two,  charged  with  corrupting  the 
youth  and  depraving  the  religion  of  the  city,  was  put  to  death 
by  the  rulers  of  Athens ;  while  Rato,  his  disciple,  was  cast  into 
prison  by  Dionysius,  the  tyrant  of  Syracuse.  It  is  to  be  said, 
however,  for  the  Greek  gods  of  the  Olympian  dynasty,  that 
they  are  not  alone  in  their  hatred  of  innovation, — a  feeling 
common  to  all  gods.  The  gods  are  the  creation  of  past  achieve- 
ment crystallized  into  the  present  order.  In  fighting  innova- 
tion they  are  fighting  for  life.  Whoever  would  change  exist- 
ing conditions  must  always  first  wrestle  with  and  overcome 
'  the  gods,  for  gods  always  belong  to  the  conservative  party. 
The  gods  of  the  Olympiad,  being  the  gods  of  the  leisure 
class,  protected  the  interests  of  that  class  at  the  expense  of 
the  other  classes  of  society.  Zeus  was  the  god  of  the  House- 
Father,  to  whom  he  gave  power  over  the  women,  the  children, 
and  the  slaves.  The  women  and  the  children  shared  with 
the  House-Father,  in  a  measure,  in  the  favor  and  protection 
of  the  gods ;  they  were  essential  to  the  continuance  of  the 
house  and  to  the  permanence  of  the  existing  religion.  The 
House-Father  could  not  by  his  neglect  or  his  cruelty  impair 
the  integrity  of  his  family  without  incurring  the  wrath  both 
of  the  gods  of  the  house  and  the  gods  of  the  city.  i  Religion 
protected  the  wife  and  the  children  against  the  unrestrained 
strength  of  the  man. 

But  the  slave,  either  taken  in  war  or  purchased  with  money, 
was  outside  the  pale  of  divine  protection.  Instead  of  ab- 
horring slavery,  the  gods  delighted  in  it.  The  captive  slave 
was  the  spoil  of  the  war,  the  reward  of  the  triumphant  god 
over  the  defeated  god, — and  the  ancient  god  had  no  pity  for 
weakness.  Poverty  was  a  crime  visited  with  enslavement 
or  death.  In  archaic  times  the  exploitation  of  the  weak  by 
the  strong  was  practiced  without  limit  and  without  remorse. 
It  was  the  divine  order.  "Vae  victis !"  was  the  cry  of  the 
gods  as  well  as  of  the  men  of  that  primitive  age.  Prosperity 
was  a  sign  of  the  favor  of  the  gods,  adversity  of  their  dis- 
pleasure. The  master  class  saw  in  the  misery  of  the  lower 
class  the  visitation  of  the  wrath  of  the  gods.  His  religion 


44  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

made  him  callous  to  the  sufferings  of  his  fellow-men.  Cruelty 
was  practiced  as  a  function  of  religion.  To  this  day  the 
master  class  of  the  Aryan  people  has  exploited  the  lower  class 
in  the  name  of  his  gods.  His  mastership  is  a  divine  right; 
the  subjection  and  misery  of  the  lower  class  a  divine  ordering. 
Without  that  subjection  and  misery  the  master  class  could 
not  exist,  and  with  the  existence  of  the  master  class  is  bound 
up  the  existence  of  civilization.  Slavery  in  some  form  or 
other  is  the  sacrifice  that  the  gods  of  civilization  have  always 
demanded  as  a  condition  of  their  favor. 

In  imputing  to  the  gods  of  the  Olympiad  a  disregard  of 
morality,  I  have  perhaps  done  them  an  injustice;  for  morality 
is  a  relative  term,  the  morality  of  one  age  being  the  im- 
morality of  another.  Moreover,  the  gods,  like  the  kings, 
have  always  been  above  the  law  and,  like  the  kings,  can  do 
no  wrong.  The  Olympian  gods  had,  it  is  true,  little  regard 
for  our  modern  standard  of  morals;  but  they  had  a  morality 
of  their  own  and  that  of  a  very  high  order.  The  virtue  that 
they  practiced  and  rewarded  was  the  virtue  of  self-expression, 
bodily  perfection,  intellectual  clearness;  beauty  of  form  and 
clarity  of  speech  were  the  essence  of  their  life.  Ugliness 
was  a  sin,  intellectual  slovenliness  a  crime.  Their  great 
moral  conception  was  expressed  in  the  words  To  xaXdv,  — 
that  which  is  beautiful  and  good  and  proper.  As  a  con- 
sequence of  its  morality,  the  Olympian  religion  developed 
the  human  form  in  comeliness,  so  that  its  beauty  was  the 
inspiration  of  the  highest  sculptural  art  to  which  the  genius 
of  man  ever  has  or  ever  can  attain ;  and  it  evolvetl  the  one 
perfect  language  ever  used  by  man  for  the  expression  of  his 
thoughts. 

The  European  Aryan,  for  reasons  that  will  appear  later, 
came  under  the  power  of  an  alien  god,  was  subjected  to  an 
alien  morality,  and  has  for  centuries  been  in  rebellion  against 
this  alien  god  and  a  violator  of  this  strange  morality.  From 
time  to  time,  as  in  the  days  of  Leo  X,  of  Louis  XIV,  and  of 
Queen  Anne,  Aryanism,  under  the  name  of  Paganism,  openly 
and  flagrantly  set  at  naught  the  gods  and  the  morals  of  the 
dominant  religion.  In  our  day  the  Hellenic  conception  of 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  45 

religion  is  profoundly  modifying  the  Hebraic  and,  with  an 
element  neither  Hellenic  nor  Hebraic,  is  combining  to  form 
a  new  conception  of  religion  and  to  give  new  shapes  to 
the  gods. 


CHAPTER   X 

The  Twofold  Destiny  ot  Zeus 

In  the  course  of  history  the  conception  of  Zeus  in  the 
minds  of  the  people  was  changed  both  for  the  better  and  the 
worse.  As  time  went  on  he  became  the  god  of  the  school;; 
and  the  god  of  the  pothouse.  Each  of  these  changes  was 
detrimental  to  his  popularity  and  destructive  of  his  influence 
as  a  god;  for  the  reason  that  the  philosophers  in  the  schools 
refined  him  beyond  the  reach  of  the  common  mind,  while 
the  priests  in  the  temple  and  the  poets  in  the  pothouse  de- 
graded him  below  the  level  of  the  common  conscience. 

From  a  very  early  period  there  was  a  tendency  on  the  part 
of  thinking  men  to  put  Zeus  in  a  class  by  himself;  for  while 
the  other  divinities  were  gods,  Zeus  was,  par  excellence,  The 
God.  In  him  the  divinities  were  unified.  Homer  calls  Zeus 
"the  father  of  gods  and  men." 

Monotheism  is  not  so  much  a  revelation  as  it  is  a  logical 
necessity.  The  Hebrew  prophet  was  not  more  monotheistic 
than  was  the  Greek  philosopher.  Zeus,  in  the  mind  of  the 
great  thinker,  became  the  Supreme  if  not  the  sole  God  in 
the  physical  universe,  just  as  Jehovah,  in  the  mind  of  the 
Hebrew,  was  greater  than  all  gods.  While  Zeus  was  the 
father  of  gods  and  men,  he  was  not,  as  in  Christian  theology, 
"the  Creator  of  heaven  and  earth,  the  Maker  of  all  things 
visible  and  invisible."  Greek  thought  was  incorrigibly  pan- 
theistic ;  the  world  was  ever  older  than  gods  or  men.  The 
substance  of  God,  in  the  language  of  the  schools,  is  antecedent 
to  the  person  of  God.  "In  Greek  theology  the  universe  was 


46  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

not  the  work  of  a  pre-existing  divinity,  but  rather  the  divin- 
ities were  themselves  evolved  out  of  the  pre-existing  universe."1 
But  while  Zeus  was  a  creature  born  in  time,  he  was,  in  the 
mind  of  the  Greek,  the  Perfection  of  Creation,  the  First-born 
of  the  Godhead. 

The  representations  of  Zeus,  in  the  Pheidian  period,  are 
expressive  of  personal  dignity,  religious  solemnity,  intellectual 
power,  moral  restraint,  and  emotional  poise.  He  is  the  ideal 
of  Greek  manhood  as  that  ideal  existed  in  the  minds  of  such 
men  as  Plato,  Pericles,  and  Pheidias.  It  is  doubtful  if  man 
has  ever  surpassed  this  conception  of  divinity  incarnate  in 
humanity. 

At  this  point  in  his  history  Zeus  had  ceased  to  be  the  god 
of  the  leisure  class  and  had  become  the  god  of  a  higher 
humanity;  though  he  was  still  the  god  of  the  leisure  class, 
in  so  much  as  this  ideal  of  man  was  the  ideal  of  the  leisure 
class  in  its  best  estate  and  this  artistic  presentation  the  work 
of  the  leisure  class.  But  in  the  Elian  Zeus  the  leisure  class 
is  becoming  conscious  of  something  greater  than  itself.  The 
eyes  of  Zeus  are  open  to  see  all  that  concerns  the  life  of  man. 
His  image  of  gold  and  ivory  on  the  plain  of  Elis  has  for  its 
background  ages  of  human  achievement.  This  god  is  be- 
coming too  great  to  be  the  god  of  the  leisure  class  only,  he 
must,  if  he  is  to  continue,  become  the  god  of  all  the  world. 
And  that  is  his  destiny.  Epictetus,  the  Greek  slave,  preaches 
him  as  the  god  of  a  common  humanity  to  the  senators  of 
Rome.  Philosophy  refines  Zeus  into  Theos  and  places  him 
outside  the  bourne  of  time  and  space,  in  a  region  purely 
metaphysical.  He  ceases  to  be  a  person ;  he  becomes  a  prin- 
ciple. He  is  an  object  of  thought  rather  than  an  object  of 
worship,  and  has  lost  his  place  among  the  gods  of  the  people 

But  if  Zeus  was  thus  the  victim  of  the  philosopher  and  the 
theologian,  he  suffered  more  grievous  wrong  at  the  hands 
of  the  poets  and  actors.  The  poets  recorded  the  escapades 
of  the  god,  in  his  earlier  period,  in  incomparable  verse  and 
made  them  immortal.  By  reason  of  this,  the  scandals  of 
Olympus  became  the  tittle-tattle  of  the  street  and  were  rolled 

1  "Cults  of  the  Greek  States,"  L.  R.  Farnell;  vol.  I.  p.  48. 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  47 

under  the  tongue  of  every  Grecian  man  and  woman.  In  erotic 
poetry,  and  on  the  stage,  Zeus  was  exploited  as  the  god  who 
was  guilty  of  the  rape  of  Europa  and  of  the  seduction  of 
Leda.  His  domestic  quarrels  were  the  delight  of  both  gods 
and  men,  and  he  barely  escaped  the  fate  of  the  henpecked 
husband. 

These  stories  of  the  earlier  period  did  not  in  that  period 
injure  Zeus  in  the  estimation  of  his  worshippers ;  for  they 
were  in  accord  with  the  customs  of  the  time.  The  Olympian 
gods  of  the  poet  are  made  in  the  fashion  of  the  men  of  the 
later  barbaric  and  the  earlier  civilized  period.  In  that  era 
the  rape  of  women  was  an  approved  method  of  marriage,  and 
their  seduction  not  a  crime  but  a  virtue.  In  barbarism  and 
early  civilization  women  are  wealth.  They  not  only  minister 
to  the  pleasure  of  man,  they  have  also  economic  value;  by 
their  labor  in  the  house  and  the  field  they  increased  the 
riches  of  their  master,  and  they  had  an  exchangeable  value ; 
a  man  could  trade  his  surplus  women  for  gold,  or  silver,  or 
precious  stones.  As  a  man  does  not  care  for  that  which 
costs  him  nothing,  he  set  greater  store  on  the  women  who 
resisted  his  advances  and  compelled  him  to  rape  them  by 
his  strength  and  purchase  them  with  his  money.  The  costly 
woman  is  always  the  desirable  woman.  In  his  earlier  period 
the  devotees  of  Zeus  admired  him  for  his  virility  and  had  a 
fellow-feeling  with  him  in  his  efforts  to  reduce  to  subjection 
his  wife  Hera.  Here,  again,  the  poet  reflects  the  opinion 
of  his  time.  In  the  earlier  period,  while  the  Aryan  is  still 
migratory,  the  woman  must  live  in  the  open  and  be  on  quasi- 
equality  with  man.  The  angry  jealousy  of  Hera,  resulting, 
as  it  did,  in  constant  domestic  broils,  was  the  daily  experience 
of  the  Aryan  chieftain,  and  he  thought  none  the  less  of  the 
god  because  of  the  nagging  of  his  wife.  When  he  heard 
tell  that  Hera  by  her  jealous  fury  had  disturbed  the  peace 
of  Olympus,  the  Aryan  man  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  re- 
marked :  "Just  like  a  woman !"  and  let  it  go  at  that. 

But  with  the  passing  of  time  came  the  changing  of  custom. 
The  rape  and  the  seduction  of  women  were  no  longer  a  sign 
of  manly  virtue.  Among  the  leisure  class  refinement  had 


48  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

made  the  coarseness  of  the  earlier  age  intolerable.  The  mys- 
teries of  the  human  body  were  no  longer  exposed  to  vulgar 
sight,  the  clothing  of  the  body  brought  with  it  the  sense  of 
shame.  What  men  and  women  had  once  spoken  of  openly 
they  now  veiled  behind  the  decent  phrase.  What  in  the 
earlier  period  was  ordinary  speech  and  action  became  in  the 
later  time  vulgarity  and  obscenity.  There  are  certain  func- 
tions of  human  living  that  demand  the  strictest  privacy,  and 
the  man  who  performs  these  in  the  open  or  speaks  of  them 
without  disguise  is  a  vulgar,  obscene  fellow,  unfit  for  polite 
society. 

It  is  also  the  misfortune  of  the  gods,  even  more  than  of 
men,  that  the  follies  of  their  youth  are  the  plague  of  their 
age.  Their  gaucheries,  preserved  by  the  poets,  lower  them 
in  the  esteem  of  each  succeeding  generation,  as  men  and 
women  grow  into  the  decencies  and  refinements  of  life.  And 
when,  as  in  the  case  of  Zeus  and  the  other  Olympian  divin- 
ities, these  stories  are  dramatized  and  become  the  staple  of 
the  theater ;  when  the  gods  become  the  laughter  of  the  pit 
and  the  derision  of  the  gallery;  when  they  are  used  to  excite 
the  vulgar  passions  and  to  satisfy  the  prurient  imagination, 
then  these  gods  cannot  long  survive  the  ridicule  and  contempt 
of  the  chaste  and  the  sober-minded.  Sooner  or  later  a  moral 
reaction  is  sure  to  sweep  them  out  of  their  heaven  and  con- 
sign them  to  the  darkness  and  damnation  of  perdition.  / 

This  was  the  fate  of  Zeus.  When  the  great  moral  reaction 
came,  the  Zeus  of  the  philosophers  and  the  schools  could  not 
save  the  Zeus  of  the  poets  and  the  playwrights.  As  a  result 
of  that  moral  reaction,  Zeus  lost  his  primacy,  and  the  title 
of  Supreme  Being  in  the  Western  world  passed  to  the  god 
cf  an  alien  dynasty. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  49 


CHAPTER  XI 

Athena:  Goddess  of  the  Implicit  Reason 

Next  in  importance  to  Zeus  in  the  religious  history  of  the 
Greeks  was  Athena,  the  titular  divinity  and  the  name  saint 
of  the  greatest  of  the  city  states  of  the  Grecian  civilization. 
In  Athens  Grecian  civilization  flowered,  fruited,  and  seeded, 
and  from  thence  the  seeds  of  that  civilization  were  scattered 
far  and  wide  on  the  winds  of  chance,  to  reproduce  its  thoughts, 
its  feelings,  its  culture,  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth. 

Culture  is  native  to  Athens ;  there  the  human  intelligence 
first  became  conscious  of  itself,  and  the  cultivation  of  that 
intelligence  for  its  own  sake  the  serious  occupation  of  the 
higher  order  of  man.  It  was  in  Athens  that  men  were  first 
called  philosophers, — lovers  of  wisdom ;  and  of  wisdom  Athena 
was  the  embodiment  and  the  patron.  She  was  symbolic  of 
pure  reason ;  her  mind  was  soul ;  she  was  intuitive  in  her 
processes  of  mentality ;  she  did  not  think,  she  felt. 

Athena  was  the  wisdom  of  the  Greeks  manifesting  that 
conception  of  life  which  was  the  soul  in  the  body  of  Hellenic 
civilization.  Her  wisdom  was  manifested  by  the  method  she 
used  to  acquire  her  supremacy  in  the  city  of  her  choice.  As 
the  story  goes :  When  the  city  of  Athens  was  not  yet  founded 
but  was  a  plan  in  the  minds  of  the  gods,  Poseidon  contended 
with  Athena  for  the  patronage  of  the  city.  It  was  decreed 
by  the  judges  that  the  protection  of  the  city  should  be  in 
the  keeping  of  that  divinity  who  should  bring  to  the  cradle 
of  the  infant  community  the  most  useful  gift.  Poseidon, 
the  god  of  the  sea,  came  first,  bringing  as  his  gift  a  horse, 
and  after  him  came  Athena  with  an  olive  tree.  When  Pos- 
eidon saw  the  little  gnarled  tree  in  the  hands  of  Athena  he 
laughed  it  to  scorn,  and  all  the  gods  laughed  with  him. 

"Is  not  this,"  cried  the  Sea  God,  "just  like  a  woman?  Do 
you  not  know,  O  daughter  of  Zeus,  that  the  Grecian  men  have 
been  of  old  hunters  and  fighters?  on  my  horse  this  city  will 
ride  forth  to  the  conquest  of  the  world !" 

And  all  the  gods  answered :      "Amen." 


50  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Then  Athena  courtesied  in  the  presence  of  the  gods  and 
said: 

"What  you  say,  O  son  of  Chronos,  is  true:  Grecian  men 
have  been  of  old  fighters  and  hunters,  they  rode  on  horses 
in  the  chase  of  flying  men  and  beasts.  But  what  men  have 
been,  men  will  not  be.  Human  nature  changes.  Here  on 
this  hill  a  new  civilization  is  coming  to  the  birth.  Here 
men  will  cease  to  fight,  and  learn  to  think.  They  will  burn 
the  oil  of  the  olive  in  their  lamps,  and  through  the  long 
nights  will  study  the  wisdom  of  the  gods.  This  City  will 
make  conquest  of  the  world ;  men  of  all  ages  and  all  countries 
will  bow  in  her  courts,  drawn  thither  not  by  the  renown  of 
her  wars,  but  by  the  glory  of  her  arts.  She  will  light  with 
the  oil  of  the  olive  the  torch  that  will  enlighten  the  world ; 
men  will  learn  from  her  the  folly  of  war  as  a  means  of  ascend- 
ency of  man  over  man.  Let  us  leave  to  coarser  natures  the 
physical  conquest  of  the  world,  while  we  are  content  to  rule 
in  and  over  the  thoughts  of  men.  Because  of  this,  O  Holy 
Gods,  I  bring  to  the  cradle  of  this  new-born  civilization  the 
leaf  of  the  olive  as  the  symbol  of  peace  and  the  oil  of  the 
olive  as  the  source  of  light." 

Then  all  the  gods  rose  up  and  bowed  before  Athena  and 
by  unanimous  vote, — Poseidon  alone  objecting, — proclaimed 
Athena  the  patron  of  the  city,  which  was  called  after  her 
name. 

So  runs  the  story  of  the  foundation  of  Athens.  Let  him 
who  has  faith  in  the  gods  believe. 

But  this  wise  goddess  knew  that  man  does  not  change 
his  nature  in  a  night.  Only  little  by  little  does  he  put  off 
the  old  man  and  put  on  the  new.  As  he  had  been  a  man  of 
war  from  his  youth,  a  hunter  and  a  fighter  by  the  habit  of 
ages,  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  he  would  at  once  disarm 
and  expose  himself  without  a  weapon  to  the  insolence  of  his 
enemies.  The  new  civilization  of  the  spirit  must  grow  up 
under  the  protection  of  the  old  civilization  of  the  sword.  Be- 
cause of  the  hardness  of  the  hearts  of  men,  the  violence  of 
war  must  be. 

So  Athena,  being  practical  as  well  as  the  goddess  of  pure 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  51 

reason,  recognized  this  necessity  of  war  for  the  time  being 
and  took  it,  with  all  the  other  interests  of  Athens,  under 
her  protection ;  thus  becoming  the  war  goddess  of  the  Ath- 
enian worship;  her  sign,  the  helmet  and  spear.  When  the 
safety  of  her  city  demands  it  she  does  not  hesitate  to  put  on 
her  helmet  and  take  up  her  spear.  Men  think  it  strange 
to-day  that  women  are  militant.  As  if  they  had  not  always 
been  militant, — fierce  fighters  for  the  safety  of  their  young! 
In  the  migratory  days,  if  the  men  were  defeated  in  battle, 
the  women  died  in  defense  of  the  camp.  Caesar  in  his  wars 
with  the  Germans  had  to  reckon  with  the  women  as  well  as 
with  the  men.  They  were  ready  to  kill  and  be  killed  until 
the  last  one  perished  on  the  field  of  battle.  In  the  course 
of  the  Gallic  wars  Caesar  killed  over  a  million  men  and  women, 
the  number  of  women  being  almost  equal  to  that  of  the  men. 

In  our  day  women  are  fighting  for  political,  social,  and 
industrial  equality  with  every  weapon  upon  which  they  can 
lay  hand,  and  the  men  are  powerless  because  they  do  not  dare 
to  kill  the  women.  They  cry :  "These  women  are  furies !" 
and  the  women  answer  them :  "You  are  right,  we  are  furies ; 
we  have  always  been  furies  in  defense  of  the  rights  of  our 
children.  You  men  have  built  up  a  civilization  based  upon 
violence.  You  have  reduced  women  to  subjection  by  viol- 
ence ;  as  it  suits  your  convenience  you  use  her  or  leave  her, 
you  make  of  her  your  slave  in  your  factories,  growing  rich 
upon  her  unrequited  labor.  It  is  by  violence  that  you  main- 
tain the  inequalities  and  inequities  of  your  civilization,  and 
by  violence  we  will  destroy  them."  In  this  contention  the 
women  have  the  approval  of  the  goddess  Athena,  who,  when 
the  battle  was  going  against  her  side  on  the  field  of  Troy,  did 
not  hesitate  to  leap  upon  the  chariot  and  drive  into  the  midst 
of  the  fray  and  win  a  victory  over  Ares,  the  god  of  war. 

In  the  person  of  Athena,  woman  is  a  ruler  in  the  state : 
she  sits  at  the  council  board,  where  she  discusses  and  decides 
questions  of  war  and  peace.  The  saying  that  woman's  sphere 
is  in  the  home  is  true  of  her  as  of  all  women,  because  the 
city  is  her  home.  The  notion  that  you  can  take  a  woman 
and  shut  her  up  in  a  house,  away  from  the  general  life  of  the 


52  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

state,  is  the  thought  of  men  in  the  times  of  their  degeneracy. 
In  all  great  crises  of  political  history  the  women,  with  the 
men,  conduct  the  affairs  of  State.  The  greatest  periods  in 
English  history  are  the  ages  of  Elizabeth,  Anne,  and  Victoria. 

Athena  was  not  a  virgin  goddess  in  the  sense  that  Artemis 
and  Mary  were  virgin.  Her  womanhood  is  but  an  accident 
not  of  the  substance  of  her  nature.  She  is  in  reality  neither 
male  nor  female,  but  the  blending  of  both  in  a  perfect  hu- 
manity. She  is  a  woman  because  womanhood  is  the  stronger 
element  in  human  nature.  Athena  is  not  a  lover  of  men 
because  she  is  a  lover  of  man.  She  is  not  and  cannot  be 
the  mother  of  a  family,  because  she  is  the  mother  of  a  city, 
—the  nurse  of  a  civilization.  She  is  the  goddess  of  the  dawn, 
ever  fresh  and  pure  and  strong.  She  lies  alone  at  night  and 
goes  forth  alone  in  the  morning.  She  is  the  prototype  of  that 
great  company  of  women  who,  in  all  ages,  have  risen  above 
sex  into  a  sexless  humanity;  who  have  fed  from  the  fountains 
of  their  love  not  the  children  of  their  womb  but  the  children 
of  their  time;  who  have  been  mothers  but  not  wives,  and 
of  whom  it  is  written :  "More  are  the  children  of  the  desolate 
than  the  children  of  the  married  wife,  saith  the  Lord." 

As  an  object  of  worship,  Athena  inspired  the  noblest  art 
by  which  man  has  ever  wrought  to  the  glory  of  his  god. 
Her  temple,  the  Parthenon,  stands  to  this  day  unsurpassed 
and  unsurpassable,  the  brightest  expression  in  the  form  of 
building  that  man  has  given  of  his  conception  of  the  divine. 
This  temple  has  nothing  of  the  extravagance  (shall  I  say?) 
of  the  insanity  of  the  architecture  of  the  Gothic  period;  its 
keynote  is  serenity.  The  mystery  of  life  is  subordinated 
to  the  mastery  of  life.  Here  is  so  much  of  the  mystery  that 
we  have  mastered.  Here  is  the  length  of  it ;  here  is  the 
breadth  of  it ;  here  it  stands  on  its  rock  foundation ;  the  sky 
is  over  it ;  the  earth  is  beneath  it ;  the  sky  may  be  deeper  and 
the  earth  wider  but  this  much  of  space  we  have  made  our 
own.  Here  we  have  built  a  house  for  our  god,  this  is  our 
place  in  the  universe,  and  with  it  we  are  content.  Beyond 
us  greater  worlds  may  lie,  but  neither  the  fear  of  them  nor 
the  hope  of  them  can  disturb  our  serenity. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  53 

Dr.  Farnell  in  his  interesting  and  valuable  work,  "The 
Cults  of  the  Greek  States,"  tells  us  that  the  origin  of  the  name 
Athena  is  unknown.  He  deprecates  any  effort  on  the  part 
of  philologists  to  trace  it  to  any  language  antecedent  to  the 
Greek,  holding  all  such  efforts  misleading  and  harmful  to 
true  scholarship.  This  position  of  Dr.  Farnell  is  the  antithesis 
of  that  taken  by  Max  Miiller  and  his  school,  who  were  apt  to 
find  all  the  gods  of  the  later  age  in  the  records  of  the  earlier 
periods.  The  study  of  the  Sanscrit  and  the  mastery  of  the 
sacred  literature  of  India  gave  these  scholars,  as  they  thought, 
the  key  that  opened  the  door  to  a  better  understanding  of 
Western  religion.  Doubtless  there  were  many  fanciful  and 
extravagant  uses  of  this  method,  and  relations  were  found 
where  relations  did  not  exist.  But  for  all  that  I  think  the 
philologist  has  been  helpful  to  the  mythologist,  and  to  discard 
this  aid  altogether  is  going  from  one  extreme  to  the  other. 

Notwithstanding  the  criticism  of  Dr.  Farnell,  I  am  inclinea 
to  identify  the  A-thena  of  the  Greeks  with  the  Ahana  of  the 
earlier  Sanscrit  period.  Ahana  was  the  breath  of  the  morning, 
springing  from  the  brow  of  Dyaus  and  blowing  away  the 
mists  that  hide  him  from  the  earth.  I  am  fond  to  think 
that  when  the  Aryan  migrated  from  East  to  West  Ahana 
went  before  him,  and  after  marching  all  the  night  over  the 
land,  or  rowing  over  the  sea,  when  morning  came  and  he 
saw  the  great  rock,  which  is  the  Acropolis  of  Athens,  and 
felt  upon  his  brow  the  cooling  breeze,  he  bowed  his  head 
and  worshipped,  saying:  "It  is  Ahana."  And  there  he  ouilt 
his  city,  consecrating  it  to  the  freshness  of  the  dawn. 

When  the  day  of  Grecian  civilization  declined  and  the  night 
came  on,  when  the  temple  of  Athena  was  broken  down,  her 
altar  deserted,  her  name  forgotten,  the  goddess  did  not  ceace 
to  be,  she  only  changed  her  form.  Losing  the  last  vestige 
of  sex,  she  reappears  the  most  mysterious  of  the  gods  of  the 
succeeding  age  known  as  To  Hagion  Pneuma, — The  Holy  Air; 
the  Spirit  of  the  Living  God, — proceeding  from  Him  as  the 
Breath  of  the  Eternal  Morning,  for  the  inspiration  and  the 
purification  of  the  children  of  men. 


54  THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

CHAPTER  XII 

Phoebus  Apollo:    The  God  of  the  Explicit  Reason 

Zeus,  the  father  of  gods  and  men,  had  many  sons,  of  whom 
Phoebus  Apollo  was  by  far  the  most  distinguished.  Like 
many  another  notable  person,  he  was  born  out  of  wedlock. 
Leto,  his  mother,  was  not  the  wife  but  the  mistress  of  Zeus. 
Inflamed  by  her  beauty,  the  god  compelled  her  submission. 
In  this,  as  in  all  like  cases,  the  woman  paid.  Hera,  the  wife 
of  Zeus,  discovering  the  intrigue,  determined  that  the  ill- 
begotten  brat  of  this  woman  should  not  be  born  within  the 
precincts  of  Olympus,  nor  upon  any  land  under  the  sky.  In 
jealous  rage  she  stirred  up  Python  to  pursue  Leto  from  coun- 
try to  country.  The  dread  of  the  anger  of  Hera  compelled 
the  people  to  refuse  to  the  expectant  mother  the  hospitality 
that  she  so  sorely  needed.  She  fled  from  the  devouring 
dragon  until  she  came  to  Delos,  an  island  that  until  then 
was  hidden  under  the  water,  floating  from  place  to  place ;  but 
taking  pity  upon  the  victim  of  the  gods,  it  rose  above  the 
water,  fastened  itself  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  and  gave 
asylum  to  the  laboring  woman.  There,  after  a  nine  days' 
travail,  Leto  was  delivered  of  twins,  Apollo  and  Artemis, 
divinities  of  the  Sun  and  the  Moon. 

As  soon  as  he  was  born,  Apollo  was  fed  by  Thetis  with 
the  nectar  and  ambrosia  of  the  gods;  when  he  had  eaten  he 
grew  apace  into  manhood,  asserted  his  divinity,  and  pro- 
claimed his  mission,  which  was  to  teach  to  men  the  ways  of 
his  father  Zeus.  Setting  forth  upon  this  enterprise,  the 
earth  welcomed  him  with  the  blooming  of  flowers  and  the 
singing  of  birds.  Men  came  to  his  shrine  with  offerings, 
and  the  gods  welcomed  him  to  Olympus.  He  was  received 
by  the  celestial  company  into  the  ranks  of  the  major  gods, 
and  from  that  moment  he  sat  at  the  right  hand  of  Zeus  his 
father,  and  from  this  throne  reigned  over  the  religious  life 
of  the  Greeks. 

This  is  the  story  of  the  origin  of  Apollo  as  it  is  told  by 
the  poets.  Just  how  much  truth  there  is  in  it  I  cannot  say, 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  55 

nor  do  I  care  to  unravel  its  symbolism  and  make  plain  its 
hidden  meaning.  But  this  we  know:  Apollo  was  a  god  of 
the  middle  period  of  the  Greek  mythological  age.  He  did 
not  come  with  the  Aryan  from  the  Sanscrit  land,  nor  was 
he  found  by  them  in  Greece  at  the  time  of  the  first  and  second 
invasions.  Therefore,  he  is  either  a  product  of  Greek  inven- 
tion or  he  is  an  importation  from  Syria  and  Egypt.  ""  Some 
say  that  he  is  the  Sun  god  and  only  another  name  for  Helios, 
while  others  assert  that  he  is  not  the  symbol  of  any  of  the 
physical  phenomena  of  nature  but  is  wholly  spiritual, — a  de- 
cided advance  on  all  the  gods  who  came  before  him.  The 
greater  number  of  authorities  are  inclined  to  the  Sun-god 
theory,  and  my  own  thought  goes  that  way.  Nor  does  this 
derogate  from  the  spirituality  of  the  god;  for  what  is  the 
Sun  but  the  spirit  of  fire,  forever  burning  and  never  con- 
sumed? Apollo  is  the  Sun  as  the  regulator  of  life,  the  des- 
troyer of  evil,  the  giver  of  health,  the  revealer  of  mysteries 
and  the  teacher  of  the  truth  of  fact,  as  against  Athena,  who 
is  the  inspirer  of  truth  of  feeling.  But  let  one  take  which- 
ever theory  of  the  origin  of  Apollo  that  may  commend  itself 
to  his  judgment,  yet  one  must  agree,  I  think,  with  Dr.  Smith 
when  he  says,  concluding  his  article,  in  the  "Dictionary  of 
Mythology,"  relating  to  Apollo : 

"Whatever  we  think  of  this  and  other  modes  of  explaining 
the  origin  and  nature  of  Apollo;  his  worship,  his  festivals 
and  his  oracles  had  more  influence  on  the  Greeks  than  any 
other  god.  It  may  be  safely  asserted  that  the  Greeks  would 
never  have  become  what  they  were  without  the  worship  of 
Apollo;  in  him  the  brightest  side  of  the  Grecian  mind  is 
reflected." 

In  Apollo  the  gods  are  lifted  above  the  passion  of  man 
for  woman.  Whatever  children  he  had,  if  any,  are  not  the 
children  of  his  loins  but  the  children  of  his  soul.  Asclepios 
is  sometimes  called  the  son  of  Apollo,  but  Apollo  had  neither 
wife  nor  mistress,  and  Asclepios  was  his  son  by  spiritual 
generation. 


56  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

It  was  the  mission  of  Apollo  to  destroy  evil  in  the  world. 
He  brought  to  light  the  secret  murder  and  adultery  and 
visited  upon  the  offender  the  consequences  of  his  crime.  The 
wrath  of  Apollo  was  the  dread  that  staid  the  crime.  It  was, 
however,  the  pleasure  of  the  god  to  prevent  rather  than  to 
punish  crime,  to  forestall  rather  than  to  cure  sickness.  In 
him  was  the  healing  power  of  the  Sun-light  in  which  if  a  man 
lives,  he  can  be  neither  sickly  nor  wicked. 

But  far  more  important  than  the  prevention  or  the  punish- 
ment of  crime,  of  far  more  consequence  to  the  world  than  the 
forestalling  or  cure  of  sickness,  was  the  gift  of  prophecy  pos- 
sessed by  the  god.  It  was  this  that  gave  him  his  power  and 
place  in  Greek  religion.  His  oracle  at  Delphi  was  consulted 
by  the  Greeks,  both  in  private  and  public  affairs.  Nothing 
of  importance  was  done  without  first  hearing  what  the  god 
had  to  say  about  it.  Statesmen  waited  on  this  oracle,  mer- 
chants sailed  at  his  word,  and  lovers  mated  at  his  bidding. 
We  may  laugh  at  his  oracular  speech  and  say  that  each  man 
received  from  the  god  the  answer  that  he  wanted  for  his 
question,  but  our  laughter  is  the  laughter  of  fools.  In  waiting 
for  the  oracle  of  the  gods,  man  waited  for  his  own  second 
thought,  and  so  waiting,  was  the  wiser.  In  Apollo  man  ad- 
vanced from  impulse  to  reason  as  a  guide  of  action.  The 
god  prophesied  of  things  to  come,  and  by  his  prophesy  made 
his  future  obedient  to  his  present.  Only  he  laughs  at  Apollo 
who  has  never  listened  to  the  voice  of  the  god,  telling  him 
what  to  do  and  what  not  to  do.  The  god  may  sometimes 
make  a  mistake,  but  it  is  better  to  suffer  the  mistakes  of 
the  gods  than  the  consequences  of  our  own  folly.  The  Del- 
phic oracle  may  require  interpretation,  but  to  interpret  the 
thought  of  a  god  is  better  than  to  trust  to  one's  own  shal- 
lowness. 

The  sign  of  Apollo  was  the  lyre.  He  was  the  god  of 
harmony  and  melody, — the  principle  of  order  in  the  world. 
The  universe  in  which  man  lives  is  harmonious ;  it  is  in  tune 
with  itself.  Its  motions  must  be  rhythmic,  if  life  is  to  be 
happy.  Harmony  is  more  than  the  basis  of  music,  it  is  the 
eternal  song  sung  by  the  morning  stars.  Music,  like  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  57 

soul  of  gods  and  men,  is  neither  in  time  nor  in  space,  but  it 
measures  time  and  is  heard  in  space.  When  the  soul  is  fully 
developed,  it  is  a  note,  or  a  half-note,  or  a  quarter-note  in 
the  eternal  score  that  the  god  of  music  is  writing  to  tell  all 
the  joy,  the  pathos,  the  passion  of  living. 

Apollo  is  the  god  of  order,  in  contradistinction  to  the  god 
of  law.  Law  and  order  are  not  words,  as  some  suppose, 
identical  in  meaning.  Law  is  from  without,  order  is  from 
within;  law  is  command,  order  is  habit.  When  there  is  law 
there  is  as  yet  no  perfect  order;  where  there  is  order  there 
is  no  need  for  law.  In  the  great  unconscious  nature  of  the 
gods  order  prevails  and  habit  rules.  We  speak  of  the 
laws  of  nature,  and  by  so  speaking  create  a  confusion  of 
tnought,  as  if  there  were  somewhere  in  nature  a  Congress 
assembled,  with  its  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives, 
making  laws  for  nature  to  obey ;  or  some  Tsar  issuing  hia 
ukase  commanding  the  obedience  of  the  world.  But  that  is 
riot  the  system  that  obtains  in  nature. 

Nature  knows  no  laws.  She  is  the  creature  of  her  habits , 
sne  follows  custom,  and  custom  is  the  source  of  order.  Law 
may  lead  to  order,  but  it  is  not  order  until  custom  has  made 
the  law  unnecessary.  In  human  society  are  many  laws  ami 
little  order.  Human  society  will  be  at  unity  with  itself  when 
justice,  mercy,  and  truth  are  the  habits  of  society  as  har- 
monic movement  is  the  habit  of  the  waves  of  sound.  Not 
until  men  do  not  need  government  can  government  be  suc- 
cessful. When  Apollo  reigns  in  the  heart  as  well  as  in  the 
ear,  then  and  then  only  will  human  society  be  a  harmony 
and  not  a  discord  in  the  ears  of  the  gods. 

Apollo  was  to  the  Greeks  the  god  of  the  explicit  reason 
in  speech  as  well  as  in  music.  It  was  his  art  to  make  music 
audible  and  speech  understandable.  Athena  was  the  god- 
dess of  the  pure  reason,  Apollo  the  god  of  reason  expressing 
itself  in  thoughts  and  explaining  its  thought  in  language. 
It  was  the  devotion  of  the  Greek  to  this  god  of  the  explicit 
reason  that  has  given  him  his  place  in  the  life  of  the  world. 
The  demand  of  Apollo  was  for  cleanness  and  clearness  of 
thought;  so  cleanness  and  clearness  of  thought  was  the  ab- 


58  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

sorbing  passion  of  the  Greek  thinker.  In  his  struggle  for 
the  attainment  of  this  virtue,  he  elaborated  the  one  perfect 
language  ever  spoken  by  man ;  he  studied  the  order  of  think- 
ing and  formulated  it  into  a  science.  Grammar  and  logic 
and  geometry  are  by-products  of  the  Grecian  passion  for 
intellectual  clarity.  Socrates,  the  greatest  of  the  Greeks, 
was  the  prophet  of  clarity ;  with  his  keen  dialectic  he  dissected 
the  sophistries  of  the  men  of  his  time  and  compelled  them 
to  think  clearly, — if  they  would  think  at  all. 

This  passion  of  the  Greeks  for  intellectual  clarity  has  made 
the  world  their  debtors  till  the  end  of  time.  When  we  invent 
the  telegraph,  the  telephone,  we  go  to  the  Greeks  for  the 
name  of  our  invention.  So  essential  to  human  thinking  has 
the  Greek  made  his  language  and  his  literature  that  it  is  to- 
day necessary  to  culture.  One  who  has  had  no  acquaintance 
with  the  speech  of  Plato  and  St.  John  is  wanting  in  one  of 
the  elements  that  go  to  make  up  the  equipment  of  the  cul- 
tured man.  One  may  get  along  without  it,  but  one  would 
get  along  a  great  deal  better  with  it.  However,  even  if  one 
cannot  read  the  language,  one  has  it  to-day  within  one's 
reach  and  one  is  greatly  to  blame  if  one  is  not  acquainted 
with  the  mode  of  the  Grecian  mind.  Chapman's  Homer  is 
better  than  no  Homer  at  all,  and  Jowett's  Plato  is  almost 
equal  to  Plato  himself.  One  must  not  forego  Grecian  culture, 
even  though  one  cannot  read  Greek. 

It  is  true  that  the  Greeks  cultivated  the  explicit  reason 
at  the  expense  of  implicit  reason,  they  became  more  attentive 
to  the  form  of  thought  than  to  the  substance  of  thought. 
This  passion  for  clarity  led  them  to  explain  their  explana- 
tions until  their  method  of  reasoning  was  its  own  destruction. 
The  Greeks  were  always  on  the  verge  of  the  great  discoveries 
of  modern  science.  As  early  as  Pythagoras  they  had  asserted 
the  rotundity  and  revolution  of  the  earth,  they  were  acquainted 
with  the  phenomena  of  electricity.  They  failed  to  follow 
these  lines  of  discovery  because  their  itch  for  argument 
hindered  the  cultivation  of  the  powers  of  observation. 

But  what  of  that?  Has  not  the  Greek,  in  cultivating  clarity, 
in  giving  us  logic  and  grammar  and  music  and  sculpture  and 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  59 

architecture,  done  enough  for  us?  If  he  had  gone  on  and 
made  all  the  discoveries  that  have  been  the  glory  of  our  time, 
what,  pray,  would  have  been  left  for  us  to  do?  Let  us  be 
content  with  what  he  did,  and  thankful  for  what  he  did 
not  do. 

The  sculptors  of  Greece  made  Apollo  the  embodiment  of 
the  notion  that  man  is  a  spiritual  being, — his  body  the  crea- 
tion of  his  soul.  When  we  look  at  the  Apollo  Belvedere 
we  are  impressed  by  the  mentality  and  spirituality  of  the 
figure;  the  wide  forehead,  the  deep  eyes,  the  firm  jaw,  and 
square  chin  are  indicative  of  intellectual  power  under  the 
control  of  a  strong  will,  directed  by  a  high  moral  purpose. 
The  physical  elements  are  everywhere  subordinated  to  the 
mentality  and  spirituality  of  the  man.  But  there  is  nothing 
of  Eastern  ascetism  in  the  figure.  The  body  is  full,  strong, 
and  graceful, — under  control,  but  not  enslaved.  The  soul  oi 
Apollo  was  not  afraid  of  his  body.  In  him  we  find  that  per- 
fect balance,  that  sane  mind  in  a  sound  body  which  was  the 
ideal  of  the  Grecian  religion.  Take  him  for  all  in  all,  Apollo 
was  about  as  fine  a  god  as  men  have  ever  worshipped.  He  was 
of  the  Emersonian  type, — calm,  equable,  sure  of  himself, 
and  sure  of  the  universe.  We  need  in  our  day  to  cultivate 
the  worship  of  Apollo,  to  mould  the  crudeness  of  our  sub- 
stance to  the  perfection  of  his  form,  to  bring  into  our  mighty 
but  noisy  and  vulgar  civilization  the  harmony  of  his  lyre  and 
the  melody  of  his  lute. 


CHAPTER    XIII 

Aphrodite:  The  Goddess  of  Desire 

Primitive  religious  thought,  or  feeling,  differs  from  the 
modern  in  nothing  so  much  as  in  its  attitude  toward  the 
great  fact  of  reproduction.  Man  living  in  the  Eden  of  innocent 
unconsciousness  was  naked  and  not  ashamed ;  he  had  not  yet 


60  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

come  to  think  of  his  origin  as  degraded  and  dishonorable ; 
ne  saw  that  in  Nature  sex  relationship  gave  rise  to  wonderful 
and  beautiful  phenomena.  This  relationship  gave  fragrance 
and  color  to  the  plant,  plumage  and  song  to  the  bird ;  beard 
and  strength  to  the  man,  fairness  and  gracefulness  to  the 
woman.  The  cycle  of  changes  consequent  upon  the  advent 
of  reproductive  power  are  so  wonderful  that  they  could  not 
escape  observation.  Primitive  man  looked  upon  and  wor- 
shipped this  secret  force  of  nature  as  divine. 

In  phalic  worship,  its  coarsest  physical  elements  and  func- 
tions were  the  direct  objects  of  adoration.  That  which  with 
us  is  hidden  out  of  sight  and  never  so  much  as  mentioned 
was  to  the  primitive  man  as  open  to  the  view  and  as  much 
a  matter  of  remark  as  eating  and  drinking.  He  may  have 
been, — and  doubtless  was, — less  delicate,  less  refined  than  are 
we,  but  it  does  not  follow  that  he  was  less  virtuous.  Re- 
finement and  virtue  are  often  in  inverse  ratio  to  each  other. 
The  court  of  Louis  XIV  was  most  refined,  but  the  less  said 
about  its  virtue  the  better. 

In  the  earlier  period  of  human  history,  as  in  the  animal 
world,  the  male  element  was  the  controlling  element  in  sexual 
selection.  It  is  the  male  bird  that  has  the  plumage  and  the 
voice ;  it  is  the  lion  and  not  the  lioness  that  has  the  lionine 
strength  and  beauty.  True,  in  many  species  the  male  and 
female  differ  so  slightly  that  we  never  think  of  one  more 
than  the  other  as  embodying  the  principle  of  sex,  but  this  is 
the  exception  not  the  rule.  When  we  think  of  sex  in  the 
animal  world  we  think  of  the  cock,  the  bull,  and  the  stallion, 
not  of  the  hen,  the  cow,  or  the  mare.  And,  without  doubt, 
this  was  true  in  the  primitive  times  of  man.  Man  served 
little  or  no  other  purpose  in  savage  and  early  barbarian  times 
than  that  of  the  male  of  the  species.  Nature  used  him  for 
purposes  of  propagation  only.  He  was  as  useful  and  as  use- 
less as  a  cock  in  the  barnyard,  as  a  bull  in  the  pasture.  His 
relation  to  reproduction  was  accidental  and  momentary ;  he 
was  free  to  roam  and  live  his  own  life,  which  he  did,  and  as 
a  consequence  he  developed  his  individuality,  his  physique, 
and  his  mentality  faster  than  woman.  Manly  strength,  with 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  61 

its  perfection  of  form,  is  antecedent  to  womanly  grace  and 
beauty.  It  is  so  to-day:  the  boy  is  a  finer  looking  creature 
at  twelve  or  thirteen  than  is  a  girl  at  the  same  age;  and  in 
the  working  class  the  men  as  a  rule  are  better  looking  than 
the  women. 

The  reason  for  this  is  that  the  woman  could  not  in  the 
natural  order  (and  cannot  to-day  in  the  working  class)  live 
her  own  life.  She  is  the  economic  factor  in  reproduction: 
she  must  feed  her  young  at  first  with  her  blood  and  then 
with  her  milk  and  then  with  the  labor  of  her  hands.  Her 
motherhood  absorbs  her  individuality  and  arrests  her  develop- 
ment. If  any  one  doubt  this,  let  him  look  at  the  average 
woman  and  the  average  man ;  at  the  workingwoman  and  the 
workingman. 

Among  the  civilized  people  of  the  higher  class  this  relation 
of  the  male  to  the  female  has  suffered  a  subtle  and  radical 
change.  It  is  the  female  and  not  the  male  that  we  think  of 
when  we  have  in  mind  the  phenomena  of  sex.  In  the  ruling 
and  leisure  class  woman  is  sex,  and  she  is  little  else:  the  end 
of  a  princess  is  to  be  a  princess,  to  marry  a  prince,  and  give 
birth  to  a  prince.  Until  recently  the  life  of  a  woman  of  this 
class  has  been  considered  wholly  as  relative  to  man.  The 
sex  idea  dominates  her  life  from  the  beginning  to  the  end; 
she  is  a  virgin,  or  a  wife,  or  a  widow,  or  an  old  maid,  or 
spinster,  and  never  simply  a  woman.  As  a  consequence  of 
this  change,  the  woman  in  the  upper  class  has  been  differen- 
tiated from  the  man  in  a  manner  unknown  to  the  earlier 
stages  of  society. 

This  radical  change  is  the  result  of  economic  conditions; 
the  same  conditions  that  have  brought  about  the  accumula- 
tion of  wealth  and  the  establishment  of  the  leisure  class. 
Womanly  grace  and  beauty  are  the  products  of  leisure;  to 
this  all  the  poets  bear  witness.  The  shepherdess,  who  is 
the  type  of  rustic  beauty,  has  a  leisurely  occupation ;  Blousy- 
Linda  the  bar-maid,  with  her  red  cheeks  and  her  short-lived 
beauty,  belongs  for  the  time  being  to  the  more  leisurely  of 
the  working  class.  It  is,  however,  in  the  leisure  class  itself 
that  the  beautiful  woman  is  at  home  and  prized.  Her  delicacy 


62  THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

is  in  direct  proportion  to  the  care  that  is  bestowed  upon  her 
and  her  freedom  from  care ;  her  hands  must  not  be  calloused 
by  toil,  her  back  must  not  be  bent  by  burdens,  nor  her  feet 
blistered  by  travel.  If  one  stops  to  consider,  one  will  find 
that  one  always  associates  womanly  beauty  with  a  life  of 
leisure. 

The  ancient  Greek  religion  expressed  this  fact  in  the  wor- 
ship of  Aphrodite,  the  goddess  of  beauty.  Aphrodite  had 
nothing  to  commend  her  but  her  beauty ;  she  was  born  without 
travail  from  the  sea-foam,  flowers  sprang  up  tor  her  without 
the  labor  of  cultivation;  she  is  drawn  in  a  chariot  by  doves; 
she  has  nothing  to  do  the  livelong  day  but  to  be  beautiful. 
Cupid,  her  boy,  is  naked;  her  mother  does  not  have  to  clothe 
him.  All  that  is  told  us  of  Aphrodite  reminds  us  of  the  life 
of  the  woman  of  leisure  class  in  all  periods  of  civilization: 
she  is  really  the  product  par  excellence  of  civilization. 

She  lives  by  the  exercise  of  her  sex  power.  No  sooner 
does  Aphrodite  come  into  the  presence  of  the  gods  than 
every  man  god  desires  her  and  every  woman  god  hates  her. 
Ares,  the  war  god,  is  caught  in  the  meshes  of  her  beauty. 
TTera  and  even  Athena  are  wild  with  jealousy. 

Aphrodite  is  the  goddess  of  desire,  she  is  love  for  the  .pleas- 
ures of  love;  in  her  the  pleasure  is  separated  from  the  duty. 
Men  choose  her  not  as  the  mother  of  their  children  but  as 
the  companion  of  their  idle  hours.  Man  departed  most  widely 
from  nature  when  he  made  the  pleasure  of  love  the  end  of 
love.  Nature  inspires  desire  only  at  the  mating  season.  The 
function  of  sex  is  strictly  limited  to  reproduction.  Man, 
through  the  conscious  exercise  of  his  powers,  has  been  able 
to  overcome  nature ;  and  it  is  this  fact  that  has  made  the 
life  of  man  the  shameful  thing  that  in  some  respects  it  is. 
When  in  any  great  function  of  nature  the  pleasure  attendant 
upon  the  function  is  separated  from  the  purpose  of  the  func- 
tion, disaster  follows.  When  one  eats  for  the  sake  of  eating, 
or  drinks  for  the  sake  of  drinking,  then  we  have  the  glutton 
and  the  drunkard.  Only  man  can  be  guilty  of  these  vices, 
and  far  more  disastrous  is  the  separation  of  the  pleasure  of 
loving  from  the  function  of  reproduction. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  63 

The  worship  of  Aphrodite,  the  goddess  of  desire,  is  always 
dangerous  to  man.  The  Greeks  so  recognized  it.  They 
married  Aphrodite  to  Hephaiston,  the  lame  blacksmith  of 
Olympus,  to  show  that  pleasure  must  be  subordinated  to  duty. 
When  Ares  is  caught  with  Aphrodite  by  Hephaiston  all 
Olympus  laughs  in  derision.  Her  amours  are  entertaining 
but  not  ennobling. 

As  the  goddess  of  beauty  Aphrodite  is  the  inspiration  of 
artists,  as  the  Venus  di  Milo  testifies ;  as  the  goddess  of  desire 
she  is  the  dread  of  the  moralist,  who  sees  in  her  the  wreckage 
of  life. 

Her  worship  is  not  that  of  sex  power  but  of  sex  pleasure. 
It  was  this  worship  of  sex  as  the  source  of  pleasure  that  was 
the  canker  worm  of  ancient  civilization ;  it  led  to  unnamable 
vice,  to  the  corruption  of  youth,  and  to  the  degradation  of 
age.  Wherever  civilization  accumulates  wealth,  and  gives 
rise  to  a  class  of  idle  rich,  there  this  disease  of  civilization 
is  engendered.  Every  man  and  every  woman  is  in  danger 
of  infection.  With  us,  in  our  highly  congested  civilization 
and  crowded  cities,  this  evil  is  threatening  the  very  fabric 
of  our  social  life. 

But  there  is  a  true  as  well  as  a  false  worship  of  Aphrodite. 
A  woman  has  a  right  to  be  beautiful, — beauty  is  the  desire 
of  the  gods.  The  love  of  beauty  is  in  every  star  and  every 
snowflalce.  Theologians  find  in  man's  sense  of  beauty  the 
proof  of  the  existence  of  God  ;  ugliness  being  always  associated 
with  the  devil,  beauty  with  the  Divine.  In  desiring  beauty, 
woman  desires  a  good  thing.  Civilization  may  well  pride 
itself  on  the  production  of  the  beautiful  woman,  she  is  indeed 
the  goddess  under  whose  feet  the  flowers  spring  up,  and 
at  whose  coming  the  birds  sing.  We  want  not  fewer  beauti- 
ful women  but  more.  Life  should  be  so  ordained  that  beau- 
tiful women  should  be  not  the  exception  but  the  rule.  We 
have  no  natural  right  to  shut  young  girls  up  in  factories  and 
in  stores  and  condemn  them  to  lives  of  ugliness.  Beauty 
should  be  the  right  of  many,  not  the  privilege  of  the  few. 

It  would  seem  after  all  these  ages  that  some  plan  of  living 
might  be  devised  that  would  make  it  possible  for  all  men 


64  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

to  be  vigorous  and  all  women  to  be  beautiful;  with  our 
improved  means  of  production  there  might  be  sufficient  lei- 
sure for  all  to  grow  in  grace  and  loveliness.  The  world  as 
it  is  to-day  is  a  horror  of  ugliness.  The  ancients  may  have 
sinned  in  their  worship  of  beauty,  but  we  certainly  sin  in  the 
tolerance  of  its  opposite.  We  love  ugly  buildings  and  ugly 
streets  and  ugly  men  and  women.  I  live  on  the  banks  of  a 
lovely  river,  which  the  gods  went  out  of  their  way  to  make 
beautiful, — a  river  we  have  made  hideo.us  beyond  all  recog- 
nition by  the  cinder  heaps  from  our  breweries,  and  the  purity 
of  whose  waters  we  have  defiled  by  our  sewage.  Even  if  it 
is  dangerous,  we  need  a  revival  of  the  worship  of  beauty  for 
beauty's  sake,  that  we  may  escape  from  the  ugliness  of  our 
own  creating. 

The  worship  of  Aphrodite  is  the  declaration  on  the  part 
of  the  Greek  religion  that  nature  has  associated  pleasure  with 
the  functioning  of  life.  Eating  and  drinking  and  loving  are 
all  pleasurable,  or  ought  to  be.  It  is  wrong  to  deny  these 
pleasures  to  millions  of  living  creatures;  there  is  something 
rotten  in  our  social  state  when  multitudes  of  women  are 
denied  the  pleasures  of  love,  or  must  enjoy  them  secretly, 
as  if  they  were  a  crime.  We  are  still  far  from  social  perfec- 
tion when  such  things  are  possible. 

We  do  not  want  Venus  worshipped  in  the  world  again ; 
but  we  do  want  the  worship  of  love.  Love  which  romanticism 
makes  the  basis  of  marriage  is  impossible  in  the  modern 
world,  only  because  economic  conditions  make  it  impossible. 
When  both  men  and  women  are  economically  independent 
then  love  for  love's  sake  will  be  possible  again.  The  mar- 
riage relation  and  the  love  relation  should  be  coeval.  Chil- 
dren born  of  a  loveless  union  had  best  never  be  born  at  all. 
All  our  children  should  be  like  Leonardo  da  Vinci, — love 
children. 

In  all  that  relates  to  the  regulation  of  the  man  to  the 
woman  and  the  woman  to  the  man  we  are  at  the  beginning 
of  a  new  evolutionary  era  which,  as  we  are  wise  or  unwise, 
will  lead  to  a  lower  and  a  meaner,  or  to  a  higher  and  a  nobler, 
way  of  living.  We  cannot  afford  any  longer  to  hate,  despise, 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  65 

and  'gnore  the  method  of  our  birth.  The  worship  of  Aph- 
rodite has  in  it  an  element  of  truth :  desire  is  desirable. 
Children  should  be  born  of  desire  on  the  part  of  both  the  man 
and  the 'woman,  or  they  should  not  be  born  at  all.  Our  world 
is  overcrowded  with  the  feeble  spawn  of  loveless  unions. 
It  would  be  better  if  the  quantity  were  less,  and  the  quality 
improved. 


Ares:  The  God  of  War 

It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  Aryan  religion,  in  its  best  estate, 
that  it  held  the  God  of  War  in  low  esteem.  This  divinity  has 
attained  to  the  first  rank  only  in  one  branch  of  the  Aryan 
people,  and  that  the  most  barbaric. 

In  Greece  and  Rome  during  the  classic  period  the  war 
god  was  subject  to  the  control  of  the  divinities  that  repre- 
sented the  civil,  intellectual,  and  emotional  interests  of  the 
city.  Neither  Zeus  nor  Jupiter  was  primarily  a  god  of  war. 
They,  as  rulers  of  the  State,  were  consulted  as  to  the  safety 
of  the  State,  and  war  was  made  with  their  consent  when  the 
interests  of  the  State  demanded  war;  but  war  for  war's  sake 
was  abhorrent  to  these  mighty  gods. 

Ancient  civilization  was  necessarily  militant;  for  it  was 
engaged  in  a  constant  struggle  with  antecedent  and  sur- 
rounding barbarism,  and  with  lower  forms  of  civilized  life. 
The  lower  civilizations  of  Asia  were  a  constant  menace  to  the 
higher  civilization  of  Greece;  the  barbarians  were  always  at 
the  gates  of  Rome. 

But  neither  Greece  nor  Rome,  though  constantly  at  war, 
"ever  loved  war  for  its  own  sake ;  war  was  necessary,  but  it 
'was  regarded  as  a  necessary  evil.  Goldwin  Smith  advanced 
'the  paradoxical  proposition  that  the  Romans  were  successful 
•in  war,  not  because  they  were  the  most  warlike,  but  because 


66  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

they  were  the  least  warlike  people  of  their  age  and  vicinage. 
The  Roman  went  to  war  not  as  a  pleasure  but  as  a  duty, 
not  as  a  pastime  but  as  a  business;  his  wars  were  wars  with 
a  purpose.  It  was  not  the  army  of  the  Roman,  it  was  his 
civil  organization  that  gave  him  preeminence  and  the  mas- 
tery of  the  world. 

The  Greek  civilization  was  short-lived  because  it  unduly, 
and  perhaps  unwisely,  subordinated  the  fighting  man  to  the 
philosopher  and  the  artist.  Its  great  men  are  its  thinkers, 
its  poets,  its  sculptors,  and  its  architects,  not  its  generals. 
It  was  perhaps  well  for  the  world  but  bad  for  Greece  that 
Socrates  is  more  famous  than  Themistocles,  Plato  than  Mil- 
tiades.  The  triumph  of  Greece  over  Asia  is  the  triumph  of 
the  higher  intelligence  over  the  lower;  nor  was  it  the  brute 
strength  of  the  Macedonian  soldiers  but  the  high  spirit  of 
Alexander  that  gave  him  the  victory  on  the  fields  of  Issus 
and  Arbela. 

Caesar  was  the  greatest  pure  intelligence  that  ever  applied 
itself  to  the  problems  of  war,  and  yet  war  was  not  Caesar's 
forte;  he  was  essentially  a  man  of  the  council  chamber,  the 
study,  and  the  forum.  He  could  write  and  speak  better  than 
he  could  fight.  He  never  lost  an  opportunity  to  make  a 
blunder  in  war,  but  when  he  made  a  blunder  he  had  the  intel- 
ligence to  see  it  before  his  adversary  could  take  advantage  of 
it  and  to  utilize  his  mistake  to  the  destruction  of  his  enemies. 

Both  in  Rome  and  in  Greece,  during  the  classic  period  of 
their  history,  war  was  undertaken  with  reluctance  for  pur- 
poses of  state,  and  regretted  as  hindering  the  development 
of  the  higher  life  of  the  people. 

All  this  is  reflected  in  the  religion  of  the  period.  Ares, 
the  God  of  War,  does  not  hold  a  place  of  dignity  in  the 
Olympian  dynasty;  he  is  there  on  toleration  only;  no  beauti- 
ful myths  surround  his  birth;  he  is  the  prosaic,  lawful  son 
of  Zeus  and  Hera, — the  product  of  a  loveless  union.  His 
parents  dislike  him  because  of  his  rude  manners  and  his 
savage  turn  of  mind.  To  the  Greek,  Ares  represents  the 
horrors  of  war,  the  slaughter  of  men,  the  rape  of  woman,  the 
burning  of  cities,  the  wasting  of  fields.  He  is  huge,  and  as 


67 

foolish  as  he  is  big.  Aphrodite  ensnares  him,  and  Hephaiston 
takes  him  in  the  snare.  He  is  the  ridicule  of  Olympus  as 
he  struts  about  in  his  helmet,  dangling  his  sword. 

While  Athena  is  the  goddess  of  war  as  subordinated  to 
civic  necessity,  inspired  by  moral  purpose  and  directed  by 
intelligence  to  a  speedy  and  just  conclusion,  Ares  is  the 
God  of  War  for  war's  sake.  He  is  a  swashbuckler,  a  jingo 
of  the  jingoes,  to  him  war  is  pastime,  the  piping  times  of 
peace  a  weariness.  On  the  field  of  battle  he  gloats  over  the 
dead ;  on  the  night  of  the  battle  he  rapes  the  women  of  the 
vanquished ;  he  applies  the  torch  to  the  houses  of  the  cities, 
and  tramples  down  the  growing  grain.  Ares  is  war  as  a 
destructive  force;  Athena  war  as  a  corrective,  regenerating 
force.  Athena  is  with  Caesar  civilizing  Gaul,  Ares  is  with 
Gengis  Khan  devastating  Europe;  Athena  fights  at  Salamis; 
Ares  at  Borodino. 

The  only  branch  of  the  Aryan  race  that  has  given  the  chief 
place  to  the  God  of  War  is  the  Teutonic,  in  which  are  found 
the  last  invaders  and  the  present  occupants  of  northern  and 
middle  Europe.  The  Teuton,  when  he  entered  upon  the  con- 
quest of  the  Roman  Empire,  had  a  vigorous,  native  intelli- 
gence in  a  low  state  of  cultivation.  While  his  kindred,  the 
Persians,  the  Greeks,  and  the  Latins  had  made  their  home 
in  the  regions  of  the  earth  most  favorable  to  the  progress  of 
mankind, — regions  where  were  the  great  water  courses,  the 
open  sea,  rich  valleys,  and  fruitful  hills ;  where  the  sun  was 
bright  and  the  skies  were  blue;  where  the  summer  was  long 
and  the  winter  short,  it  was  the  fate  of  the  Teuton  to  lose  his 
way  in  the  hypoborean  forests  of  the  north,  where  he  struggled 
for  existence  with  the  darkness  and  the  cold,  and  competed 
with  the  wolf  and  the  bear  for  his  place  in  the  sun.  This 
northern  forest  held  the  Teuton  in  its  savage  grasp  almost 
down  to  our  own  times.  He  was  at  the  beginning  of  our 
era  without  letters,  without  art,  without  science.  The  men 
of  the  Teutonic  people  were  war-men ;  when  there  was  no 
war  these  war-men  or  Ger-men  had  no  occupation  except 
to  eat,  which  they  did  to  gluttony,  and  to  drink,  which  they 
did  to  drunkenness. 


68  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

The  chief  god  of  the  Teutons  was  naturally  the  War  God, 
called  Woden,  or  Goden.  By  day  this  god  was  out  killing ; 
at  night  he  was  at  home  eating  and  drinking.  This  is  the 
god  of  their  fathers  who  still  rules  the  heart  and  guides  the 
life  of  the  Teutonic  people.  War  for  war's  sake  is  at  this 
writing  engaging  the  thought  and  consuming  the  energies 
of  Europe.  The  civilization  that  the  Teuton  acquired  from 
the  Greeks  and  the  Romans,  the  religion  that  he  adopted 
from  the  Hebrews,  the  gods  of  culture,  and  the  Prince  of 
Peace  are  swept  aside  by  the  fierce  strength  of  the  German 
war  god.  Woden  is  in  his  Valhalla,  drinking  the  blood  of 
his  enemies  from  the  skulls  of  the  slain.  Ares  roars ;  Athena 
weeps. 


CHAPTER  XV 

Demeter:  The  Mother  of  Sorrows 

The  myths  of  the  ancient  world,  though  the  work  of  the 
primitive  imagination,  are,  like  many  a  modern  novel,  founded 
on  fact.  Myth  is  history  written  in  hieroglyphic. 

The  story  of  Demeter  is  reminiscent  of  the  fact  that  the 
human  race  owes  the  institution  of  agriculture  to  the  woman. 
She  first  discovered  the  power  of  the  seed,  invented  a  plow, 
and  cultivated  the  land.  All  early  religions  put  agriculture 
in  the  care  of  a  goddess  and  not  of  a  god.  To  woman,  civil- 
ization owes  three  of  its  greatest  achievements:  the  domes- 
tication of  animals  (except,  perhaps,  the  horse  and  the  dog), 
the  capture  of  fire,  and  the  institution  of  agriculture  as  the 
chief  source  of  food  supply.  But  for  these  achievements,  the 
human  race  would  never  have  passed  over  from  savagery  into 
barbarism,  from  barbarism  into  civilization. 

Demeter  was  not  as  Rhea,  the  goddess  of  the  earth,  she 
was  the  goddess  of  the  plowed  field.  She  was  Mother  Earth : 
Earth  prepared  for  and  fructified  by  the  seed.  She  gave 
mother  love  to  the  children  of  her  bosom. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  69 

"Her  care  brought  the  gentle  rain  and  kept  off  the  blight. 
The  poppies  which  dotted  the  fields  with  color  were  her  gifts, 
but  the  harvest  time  was  the  time  of  her  glory.  In  the  stand- 
ing grain  and  the  gathered  sheaves  she  was  present;  over 
the  cutting,  the  threshing,  and  the  grinding  of  the  corn  she 
presided ;  the  first  new  loaves  of  bread  were  consecrated  to 
her.  So  closely  was  she  identified  with  the  grain  that  in 
all  the  worship  of  the  farm  she  took  first  place." ' 

But  if  the  harvest  was  the  time  of  her  glory,  it  was  also 
the  beginning  of  her  sorrow.  By  the  harvest  the  children 
were  taken  from  her,  and  after  the  harvest  she  was  widowed 
and  childless,  her  fields  were  desolate,  and  the  fountains  of 
her  life  were  frozen  in  the  hills.  Then  Demeter,  clothed  in 
sackcloth,  was  like  Rachel  in  Rama  weeping  for  her  children 
and  refusing  to  be  comforted  because  they  are  not. 

As  the  story  goes,  Persephone,  her  daughter,  was,  without 
her  knowledge,  given  by  Zeus  to  his  brother  Hades, — the 
dread  lord  of  the  underworld. 

"One  September  day  when  the  youthful  Persephone  was 
gathering  roses  and  lilies,  crocuses  and  violets,  hyacinths  and 
narcissus  in  a  lush  meadow,  the  earth  gaped,  and  Hades,  lord 
of  the  dead  issuing  from  the  abyss,  carried  her  off  on  his 
golden  car  to  be  his  bride  and  queen  in  the  gloomy  subter- 
ranean world." '' 

Then  the  yellow-haired  Demeter  seeks  her  daughter  far 
and  wide  among  the  haunts  of  gods  and  men.  After  a  long 
and  fruitless  search  the  Sun-God  tells  her  of  the  rape  of  her 
child.  Then  the  mother's  grief  is  turned  to  wrath.  She 
curses  the  earth  with  barrenness,  and  the  race  of  men  are 
perishing  with  starvation.  The  gods  who  depend  upon  the 
worship  of  men  for  their  existence  compel  Zeus  to  force 
Hades  to  restore  Persephone  to  her  mother.  The  grim  god 
obeys,  but  as  his  bride  departs,  Hades  gives  her  a  pome- 

"Fairbanks,"  Mythology  of  Greece  and  Rome,"  p.   171. 
2  "The  Golden   Bough,"   Frazer,  Vol.   I,   p.  36. 


70  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

granate  seed  that  possesses  the  magic  power  to  compel  her  to 
return  to  him  and  spend  in  his  house  the  third  part  of  her 
time  every  year. 

In  this  myth  we  have  not  only  the  story  of  the  seasons, 
the  anxiety  of  the  spring,  the  glory  of  the  summer,  the  sad- 
ness of  the  autumn  and  the  grief  of  winter,  but  we  have  also, 
as  in  a  parable,  the  tale  of  a  woman's  life  in  its  relation  to 
her  children.  Her  children  are  her  tragedy:  she  conceives 
in  pain,  she  rears  them  in  anxiety;  she  gives  them  of  her 
life,  and  after  all  the  toil  and  travail  they  are  snatched  away 
from  her  by  death,  carried  away  in  marriage,  or  lost  in  the 
adventures  of  life. 

Until  recently  a  woman  had  no  right  in  her  children  which 
the  man  was  bound  to  respect.  Although  she  had  borne  and 
bred  them,  they  were  not  primarily  hers  but  her  husband's. 
Zeus  acted  after  the  manner  of  the  Aryan  man  when  he  gave 
Persephone  to  Hades  without  the  knowledge  or  consent  of 
Demeter.  To  secure  the  simplest  right  in  the  life  of  her 
child,  Demeter  had  to  become  militant,  to  turn  herself  into 
a  fury,  and  force  from  the  god  what  was  due  her  as  a  goddess 
and  a  mother. 

Not  only  does  the  mother  suffer  from  the  hardness  of  the 
man,  but  she  is  sore  wounded  in  her  love  by  the  children 
themselves.  Love  descends  more  readily  than  it  ascends. 
The  love  of  God  for  man  is  greater  than  the  love  of  man  for 
God,  the  love  of  the  parent  for  the  child  stronger  and  warmer 
than  the  love  of  the  child  for  the  parent.  Mother  love  sur- 
passes all  other  love  in  its  intensity  and  duration.  It  is  the 
highest  form  of  love;  it  is  sacrificial  love, — that  gives  for  the 
sake  of  giving.  The  fabled  pelican  feeding  her  young  with 
her  breasts  is  typical  of  this  love.  I  knew  such  a  human 
pelican  once:  a  woman  widowed,  with  five  children,  whom  she 
fed  and  clothed,  and,  dying,  left  money  in  the  bank  to  provide 
for  their  education.  And  when  we  came  to  bury  her,  she 
had  no  breasts ;  she  had  literally  given  them  to  her  children 
to  eat, — she  had  starved  them  off  her  bosom. 

The  tragedy  of  mother  love  is  that  it  never  can  be  ade- 
quately returned ;  each  mother  in  turn  can  give  it  to  her 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  71 

children,  but  because  of  this  fact, — because  these  children 
must  in  turn  give  to  their  chidren, — they  cannot  give  to  the 
parents.  Love  is  the  gift  of  the  earth  to  the  plants,  not  of 
the  plants  to  the  earth. 

The  children  must  live  their  own  life;  they  must  blossom, 
fruit,  and  seed,  and  then  pass  on,  leaving  the  earth  to  mourn. 
The  mother  cannot  keep  the  children,  for  the  children  will 
not  be  always  children ;  they  soon  become  as  their  mother, 
women  grown,  with  desire  for  children  of  their  own.  It 
is  the  refusal  to  recognize  the  fact  that  one's  children  are  no 
longer  one's  children,  but  men  and  women  in  the  world,  that 
is  the  cause  of  much  unhappiness.  I  am  sure  that  Per- 
sephone, though  she  loved  her  mother,  was  not  altogether 
unwilling  to  go  away  with  Hades  and  live  with  him  as  his 
bride  and  queen. 

But  the  woman's  life,  even  when  her  children  are  grown 
and  gone,  is  not  necessarily  devoid  of  interest  and  affection. 
What  she  formerly  gave  to  her  home  she  can  now  give  to 
the  world ;  and  from  the  world  she  can  receive  affection  to 
fill  her  vacant  heart.  This  principle  is  illustrated  by  the 
story  of  Demeter  and  Eleusis.  In  the  course  of  her  wander- 
ings Demeter  came  to  the  plains  of  Eleusis,  where  a  farmer, 
not  knowing  who  she  was,  took  her  in,  gave  her  bread  and 
wine  and  shelter,  and  when  she  departed,  in  return  for  this 
hospitality,  she  made  the  plains  of  Eleusis  a  miracle  of  fer- 
tility. •  And  there  every  year,  through  all  the  Grecian  period, 
the  mysteries  of  the  goddess  were  celebrated,  and  she  was 
beloved  and  honored  more  than  all  the  gods. 

Demeter  was  not  only  the  mother  of  Persephone,  she  was 
also  the  goddess  of  agriculture.  She  had  a  public  as  well  as 
a  private  function  to  perform.  The  prosperity  of  the  world 
was  in  her  keeping. 

The  notion  that  woman  is  not  a  factor  in  business  is  so 
false  as  to  be  ridiculous.  From  the  beginning  she  has  been 
the  mainstay  of  industry.  The  factory  system  of  our  day 
is  the  outgrowth  of  the  home  industries  of  the  earlier  periods. 
Many  evils  of  our  modern  life  are  due  to"  the  fact  that  men 
are  trying  to  do  the  work  that  properly  belongs  to  the  woman. 


72  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

The  industrial  life  is  the  sphere  of  the  woman ;  she  has  the 
genius  to  turn  the  raw  material  to  human  uses.  As  long  as 
women  were  in  control  of  the  operations  of  industry  the  work 
of  the  world  was  inspired  by  religion.  Prayers  were  said 
and  hymns  were  sung  at  the  cutting  of  the  grain  and  the 
grinding  of  the  corn.  Now  that  men  have  charge  there  is 
ribaldry  and  cursing  and  the  absence  of  God. 

Our  modern  official  religion  is  the  religion  of  the  male 
world.  Its  God  is  a  father  in  the  sky  not  a  mother  on  the 
earth.  The  earth  has  been  treated  by  this  sky-father  as  the 
woman  has  been  treated  by  the  man.  It  has  been  the  servant 
of  his  will,  not  the  equal  partner  of  his  life.  He  sits  aloft 
in  his  glorious  ease,  while  she  travails  in  pain  and  degradation 
below.  It  is  his  province  to  command,  her  duty  to  obey. 

But  this  male  world  is  in  process  of  passing  away.  Mother 
Earth  is  asserting  herself.  She  is  saying  to  Father-God :  "I, 
too,  am  divine.  My  earth  is  as  holy  as  your  heaven;  my 
sorrows  as  sacred  as  your  joys.  I  claim  my  place  as  youi 
equal  in  the  house  of  the  gods.  My  word  must  be  as  your 
word.  I  will  work  with  you,  but  not  under  you." 

This  rebellion  of  the  earth-mother  against  the  sky-father, 
— of  woman  against  man, — is  startling  the  universe.  The 
women  have  the  matter  under  their  control.  If,  like  De- 
meter,  they  go  on  strike,  if  they  refuse  to  be  with  men  at  bed 
or  board,  to  cook  the  food  or  sew  the  garments,  if  the}'  go 
in  mourning  and  refuse  to  eat  bread  or  drink  water  until  men 
grant  them  an  equal  place  in  the  world,  then  there  is  no 
help  for  it :  the  man  must  yield  to  woman  her  right  to  full 
partnership  in  all  that  pertains  to  the  common  life. 

The  woman  is  more  than  a  woman,  she  is  a  person.  She 
is  of  the  substance  of  divine  humanity.  Her  sex  life  is  tem- 
porary, her  human  life  is  eternal.  She  is  both  a  mother  and 
a  goddess. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  73 

CHAPTER   XVI 

Hades:  God  of  the  Dead 

The  consciousness  of  death  came  to  man  little  by  little. 
We  cannot  believe  that  in  the  lower  animal  world  there  is 
any  comprehension  of  death, — in  the  human  sense  of  the  word. 
That  some  vague  notion  of  death  haunts  the  animal  mind 
may  be  possible ;  for  when  a  cow  dies  in  a  pasture  the  rest  of 
the  herd  is  startled  and  gathers  round  the  dead  body  and 
makes  a  sort  of  lamentation ;  but  as  soon  as  the  carcass  is 
removed,  the  lamentation  ceases  and  the  incident  closes.  The 
animal  does  not  reflect  on  death  as  universal  to  all  living 
things.  The  anticipation  of  its  own  death  has,  probably,  no 
place  in  the  animal  mind. 

With  man,  however,  it  is  different.  With  the  cultivation 
of  his  faculties  of  memory  and  foresight,  with  his  powers  of 
abstraction  and  generalization,  he  has  come  to  know  death 
not  as  an  incident  but  as  a  law.  He  comes  to  the  conclusion 
that  it  is  appointed  unto  all  men  once  to  die.  He  reckons 
with  his  own  death  as  with  a  certainty.  He  buys  his  burial 
place,  he  makes  his  will,  he  sets  his  house  in  order  as  one 
who  must  die  and  not  live.  The  day  and  the  hour  of  his 
death  he  may  not  know,  but  the  fact  of  it  he  cannot  doubt. 

Religion  has  always  had  much  to  do  and  to  say  about  death. 
Indeed,  in  the  modern  world  at  least,  if  it  were  not  for  death 
there  would  be  little  or  no  call  for  religion.  Our  God  is  more 
especially  the  god  of  the  beyond ;  he  rules  in  the  regions  of 
the  dead. 

As  soon  as  the  facts  of  death  engaged  the  thought  of  man 
he  began  to  construct  a  system  in  which  death  should  not 
be  the  finality  that  it  seems  to  be  in  nature.  If  a  man  die, 
shall  he  live  again?  was  a  question  answered  in  the  affir- 
mative by  mankind  in  general ;  the  Hebrew  in  doubting  and 
denying  it  was  the  exception. 

The  relation  of  death  to  the  bodily  form  puzzled  the  ob- 
server. At  first  death  leaves  the  body  unchanged  as  to  its 


74  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

form  and  substance.  The  body  is  glorified  by  death.  In 
"The  Giaour,"  Byron  expresses  this  view  of  death  in  the  won- 
derful lines: 

He  that  hath  bent  him  o'er  the  dead, 

Ere  the  first  day  of  death  is  fled. 

The  first  dark  day  of  nothingness, 

The  last  of  danger  and  distress. 

(Before  decay's  effacing  fingers 

Have  swept  the  lines  where  beauty  lingers) 

Have  marked  the  mild  angelic  air, 

The  rapture  of  repose  that's  there, 

The  fixed  yet  tender  traits  that  streak, 

The  languor  of  the  placid  cheek. 

And — but  for  that  sad  shrouded  eye. 

That  fires  not,  wins  not,  weeps  not  now, 

And  but  for  that  chill  changeless  brow 

Where  cold  obstructions  apathy 

Appalls  the  gazing  mourner's  heart 

As  if  to  him  it  could  impart 

The  doom  he  dreads,  yet  dwells  upon 

Yes,  but  for  these,  and  these  alone, 

Some  moments,  aye,  one  treacherous  hour 

He  might  still  doubt  the  tyrant's  power. 

So  fair,  so  calm,  so  softly  sealed, 

The  first  last  look,  by  death   revealed. 

This  aspect  of  death  gave  rise  to  the  belief  in  the  contin- 
uance of  the  body.  Death  could  change,  it  could  not  destroy. 
So,  in  all  early  religions  we  find  a  firm  belief  that  the  life 
of  the  body  goes  on  after  death.  It  could  no  longer  live  on 
the  earth,  but  it  could  live  under  the  earth.  When  the  body 
was  buried,  the  means  of  life,  such  as  food  and  weapons,  were 
buried  with  it,  that  it  might  not  suffer  the  want  of  these 
things  in  its  new  dwelling-place. 

In  all  early  religions  the  continuance  of  life  after  death 
is  associated  with  burial  and  the  grave.  The  dead  are  held 
to  be  conscious  in  the  grave.  They  are  either  happy  or 
miserable  there,— happy  if  their  descendants  visit  their  graves 
with  offerings,  miserable  if  they  are  neglected.  Their  life 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  75 

in  the  underworld  is  the  shadow  of  which  life  in  the  upper- 
world  is  the  substance.  To  live  on  in  the  grave  was,  in  the 
ancient  thought,  better  than  not  to  live  at  all ;  but  it  was  a 
pale  and  shadowy  existence,  not  to  be  desired.  To  the  vivid 
imagination  there  was  a  horror  in  the  notion  of  this  life  in 
death  that  made  death  a  terror.  What  might  not  take  place 
in  those  dark  and  silent  chambers?  Again  Byron  has  ex- 
pressed the  thought  of  the  ancient  mind  better  than  any 
modern  poet: 

It  is  as  though  the  dead  might  feel 
The  icy  worm  about  them  steal, 
Without  the  power  to  scare  away 
These  cold  consumers  of  their  clay. 

We,  who  have  outgrown  these  conceptions  of  our  fore- 
fathers, do  not  know  how  great  our  deliverance  is.  We  still 
associate  our  dead  with  their  place  of  burial ;  we  still  bring 
flowers  to  them  and  think  our  presence  at  their  grave  a  con- 
solation to  them,  but  we  are  freed  from  the  horror  of  thinking 
of  them  as  alive  and  conscious.  For  us  they  are  transformed 
into  the  clean  earth ;  they  have  enriched  with  their  sweetness 
the  mold  and  are  alive  again  in  the  growing  grass  and  the 
blooming  clover.  But  with  the  ancients  the  dead  were  con- 
scious in  the  grave,  having  power  to  come  out  and  visit  the 
living  with  their  blessing  or  their  ban. 

But  if  the  fate  of  the  buried  body  was  sad,  that  of  the  un- 
buried  corpse  was  terrible;  it  was  as  a  child  without  a  home, 
a  man  without  a  country.  Claudio  cries,  in  "Measure  for 
Measure" : 

To  be  imprisoned  in  the  viewless  wind, 

And  blown  with  restless  violence  round  about 

The  pendant  world. 

This  was  the  fate  of  unburied  souls  that  went  shrieking  by 
the  windows  as  the  mad  winds  carried  them  away  from 
human  habitations  up  into  the  mountains,  or  out  into  the  sea. 

But  if  they  wefe  properly  buried,  in  the  sepulchre  of  their 


76  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

fathers  they  had  their  share  in  the  family  life,  food  was 
placed  for  them  on  their  tombs  and  libations  were  poured 
out  to  them  at  the  table. 

Gradually  the  liberty  of  the  dead  was  enlarged.  They  were 
supposed  to  be  free  to  leave  their  graves  and  go  to  some 
common  meeting-place  in  the  hollows  of  the  earth.  This 
was  considered  in  the  way  of  a  relief  from  the  terrible  mon- 
otony of  the  grave.  Here  were  the  Elysian  fields.  Here 
the  dead  could  gather  and  talk  over  old  times,  but  there  was 
nothing  going  on  in  that  region  of  peace;  no  struggle  for 
existence  called  forth  the  energies  of  the  will ;  no  demand 
was  made  upon  the  muscles  of  the  body.  All  was  still  with 
an  eternal  stillness  in  that  abode  of  the  dead, — only  shadows 
talking  with  shadows  of  that  which  had  been  but  never  would 
be  again. 

In  that  realm  of  shades,  Hades,  son  of  Chronos  and  the 
brother  of  Zeus,  was  god  and  king.  This  god  is  himself  the 
shadow  of  his  brother  on  Olympus.  He  has  no  history.  His 
rape  of  Persephone  does  not  belong  to  him  in  his  character 
as  keeper  of  the  gates  of  the  grave  but  rather  as  the  god 
who  dwells  in  the  inner  parts  of  the  earth  where  the  gold  and 
the  silver  and  the  precious  stones  are  kept,  as  in  a  vault, 
for  the  enrichment  of  those  to  whom  they  are  given  by  the 
gods  of  the  rich.  He  gives  them  that  hard,  lifeless  mineral 
wealth  in  which  the  rich  have  always  delighted.  As  the 
husband  of  Persephone  he  may  be  associated  with  agriculture, 
but  that  is  the  province  of  his  wife,  not  his.  She  must  be 
released  from  his  power  in  order  to  exercise  her  own.  So 
Persephone  lives  a  third  of  the  year  with  her  husband  under 
the  earth,  and  two-thirds  with  her  mother  above  the  earth. 

From  Hades,  the  King  of  the  Dead,  a  later  religion  derived 
its  notion  of  Satan,  the  ruler  of  hell.  But  the  idea  of  the 
ancient  world  is,  in  the  modern  cult,  degraded  by  a  cruel  and 
foul  imagination.  The  home  of  Hades  is  changed  from  a 
place  of  monotonous  rest  to  a  place  of  actual  torment.  Satan 
is  not  the  son  nor  the  brother  of  the  high  gods,  he  is  the 
enemy  of  God.  Death  is  not  the  complement  of  life,  it  is 
the  wages  of  sin.  This  Satan,  the  ruler  of  hell,  is,  in  this 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  77 

modern  religion,  one  of  the  mightiest  of  gods.  His  dominion 
is  eternal  over  the  souls  that  he  has  won  for  himself.  In 
the  "Inferno"  and  the  "Paradise  Lost,"  Satan  is  more  inter- 
esting than  God  and,  in  a  way,  greater  than  God ;  for  he 
defeats  the  purposes  of  God,  and  makes  himself  and  his  hell 
necessary  to  the  existence  of  God.  In  this  modern  concep- 
tion of  religion  one  might  almost  dare  to  say  that  if  there 
were  no  hell  there  would  be  no  God.  But  of  this  more 
hereafter. 

Goethe,  the  poet  of  the  great  nature  religion  of  our  own 
times,  has  said :  "Death  cannot  be  an  evil,  because  it  is 
universal." 

Death  does  not  defeat  God ;  it  is  a  part  of  His  plan.  When 
a  man  dies,  he  passes  away  not  from  but  into  the  source  of 
life.  While  he  lives,  he  is  life  individualized ;  when  he  dies, 
he  is  life  universalized.  And  so  it  is  written  in  the  Vulgate : 

Esto   fidelis   usque  ad   mortem, 
Et    dabo    tibi    coronam    vitse1 


CHAPTER   XVII 
Dionysus:  God  of  Madness 

The  Aryan  religion,  as  it  was  developed  by  the  Greek 
genius,  was  essentially  sane.  The  cult  of  Athena  and  the  cult 
of  Apollo  were  the  recognition,  under  the  form  of  religious 
worship,  of  the  pure  and  applied  reason.  Devotion  to  these 
gods  was  manifested  in  august  ceremonies,  in  processions, 
in  athletic  games,  in  an  architecture  severe  in  its  simplicity, 
in  a  sculpture  that  for  the  greater  part  represented  the  human 
figure  in  repose,  or  if  in  action,  as  is  the  case  of  the  Disk 
Thrower,  it  is  graceful,  dignified  action.  In  the  Apollonian 

1  Be  ye  faithful  unto  death, 
And  I  will  give  thee  a  crown  of  life. 


78  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

cult  emotion  is  restrained  and  directed  by  reason.  Sanity 
is  required  by  those  who  enter  the  temple  of  the  Sun  God,  in 
whose  clear  light  errors  are  dissipated  and  truth  made  plain. 

The  cult  of  Apollo  satisfied  the  Greek  in  the  vigorous 
period  of  his  expansion.  As  long  as  he  lived  an  active,  ob- 
jective life,  so  long  did  Apollo  and  the  Muses  content  his 
religious  instinct.  But  with  the  development  of  the  Greek 
civilization,  subjecting  as  it  did  the  many  to  the  rule  of  the 
few,  confining  (as  was  its  custom)  the  woman  to  the  seclusion 
of  the  house,  a  vast  population  was  brought  into  being,  whose 
pent-up  emotions,  finding  no  outlet  in  the  religion  of  reason 
which  the  men  of  the  ruling  class  had  set  up,  gave  themselves 
over  without  restraint  to  a  religion  of  madness. 

The  cult  of  Dionysus,  the  God  of  Madness,  competed  with 
the  cult  of  Apollo,  the  God  of  Reason,  and  swept  within  the 
circle  of  its  influence  the  women  and  the  slaves,  making  of 
the  women  furies  and  of  the  slaves  drunkards. 

This  cult,  in  my  judgment,  is  of  Eastern  and  Semitic  origin. 
Two  distinct  types  of  religion  have  always  contended  for 
supremacy, — one  we  may  call  the  Aryan  type,  the  other  the 
Semitic  type.  The  Aryan  type  is  ceremonial,  the  Semitic 
type  orgiastic;  the  one  moves  in  the  outer  world  of  fact,  the 
other  in  the  inner  world  of  feeling;  the  one  expresses  itself 
objectively  in  creed  and  ceremony,  the  other  subjectively  in 
weeping  and  praying.  In  the  one  a  man,  to  be  truly  religious, 
must  be  himself;  in  the  other  he  must  be  beside  himself. 
The  one  gives  us  a  poet  reciting  the  deeds  of  the  gods ;  the 
other  the  dancing  dervish  filled  with  the  power  of  the  gods. 

Dionysus,  the  God  of  Intoxication,  is  the  representative  of 
the  orgiastic  element  in  the  Greek  religion.  He  is  the  god 
of  the  wine  and  of  fermentation.  He  is  also  the  god  of 
the  generative  forces;  who  inspires  lust  and  is  heard  in  the 
bellows  of  the  bull  in  the  time  of  heat.  In  the  celebration 
of  his  festivals  men  and  women  threw  off  the  restraints  of 
the  acquired  reason  and  gave  themselves  over  to  primitive 
passions.  Breaking  out  of  their  homes,  women  rushed  off 
into  the  forests  and  threw  aside  their  shame  with  their  cloth- 
ing. Slaves  had  the  courage  of  their  animalism  and,  in  de- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  79 

fiance  of  their  servitude,  became   freemen   in   the   realm  of 
drunkenness  and  lust. 

Dr.  Farnell  has  set  forth  the  character  of  this  cult  so 
clearly  in  his  "Cults  of  the  Greek  States"  that  I  quote  him 
at  length  for  the  benefit  of  my  reader.  Says  this  scholar : 

"Such  was  the  religion  which  played  a  conquering  part 
in  the  large  area  of  the  Mediterranean,  assisted  at  times  by 
the  proselytizing  zeal  of  religious  brotherhoods  and  penetrat- 
ing many  of  the  citadels  of  the  Hellenic  cult,  and  which  was 
not  wholly  obliterated  by  the  forms  and  dogmas  of  Chris- 
tianity. We  can  understand  the  power  of  its  appeal :  its 
orgiastic  dance  and  revel  gratified  the  primeval  passion  that 
is  still  strong  in  us  for  self  abandonment  and  for  ecstatic 
communion  with  the  life  and  the  power  of  the  earth ;  through 
divine  possession  induced  by  the  sacrament  or  the  vertigo 
of  the  sacred  dance,  the  votary  assumed  the  power  of  the 
nature  god,  to  work  miracles,  to  move  mountains,  to  call 
forth  rivers  of  milk  and  wine;  the  religion  promised  immor- 
tality and  release  from  bondage  to  sanity  and  measure  and 
appealed  to  the  craving  for  subnormal  moods,  blending  the 
joy  of  life  on  the  mountains  with  a  fierce  lust  for  hot  blood ; 
a  lust  half  animal,  half  religious." J 

In  all  periods  of  history,  man  has  sought  for  intoxication 
induced  by  alcoholism,  opium,  or  religious  emotionalism,  in 
order  to  escape  from  the  restraint  of  his  conscious  self.  In 
times  of  over-civilization,  of  public  or  private  calamity,  men 
seek  salvation  by  abandonment ;  they  get  drunk ;  they  drug 
themselves;  they  give  way  to  wild  fantastic  feelings.  With 
men  this  form  of  deliverance  is  found  most  frequently  in 
intoxication.  The  man  breaks  out,  goes  on  a  spree,  lets  go 
his  hold  on  sobriety,  decency,  honor,  and  sanity.  All  men, 
especially  men  of  parts,  are  liable  to  these  outbreaks.  Men 
like  Fox  and  Webster  react  against  their  high  mentality  and 
fall  into  low  brutality;  being  drunk  with  thought,  they  sober 
up  by  being  drunk  with  wine. 

1  "Cults  of  the  Greek  States,"  vol.  V,  pp.   107-108. 


80  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Women  are  more  apt  to  find  relief  from  pent-up  life  in 
religious  ecstacy.  They  are  the  easy  prey  of  the  revivalist, 
who  intoxicates  them  with  his  verbiage  and  takes  possession 
of  them  through  his  animal  magnetism.  The  souls  of  men 
and  women  during  a  revival  are  excited  to  frenzy  by  descrip- 
tions of  hell,  and  relaxed  to  languor  by  voluptuous  portrayals 
of  heaven.  Christianity,  so  far  from  ignoring  these  primitive 
passions,  cultivates  them.  The  ritual  of  the  Catholic  Church 
is  a  blend  of  the  orgiastic  and  the  ceremonial.  It  makes 
a  powerful  appeal  to  the  emotions  as  distinct  from  reason. 
The  Novena,  the  pilgrimage,  the  wonder-working  power  of 
the  saints  and  the  Virgin  are  possible  only  because  women 
as  a  whole,  and  man  in  a  measure,  are  worshippers  of  Dion- 
ysus rather  than  Apollo.  The  Unitarian  depends  upon  the 
pure  ethic  of  the  Gospel,  and  his  churches  are  empty;  the 
Catholic  makes  his  appeal  through  the  sensuous  ceremonial 
of  the  Mass,  and  his  churches  are  crowded  five  times  a  day. 

The  precepts  of  reason  will  never  control  the  conduct  of 
men  unless  they  are  aided  and  abetted  by  the  emotions.  Hope 
and  fear  and  joy  and  sorrow  are  the  drawing  forces  of  human 
life.  Man  is  forever  either  fleeing  from  fear  or  indulging  in 
hope ;  he  is  falling  into  sorrow  or  rising  into  joy.  The  terror 
from  which  the  soul  is  forever  trying  to  escape  is  the  terror 
of  stagnation.  Self-consciousness  is  always  in  danger  of 
becoming  consciousness  of  self,  and  that  way  madness  lies. 
When  consciousness  lies  stagnant  in  self  it  genders  ennui, 
loathing,  paralyzing  fear,  from  which  it  must  escape  to  pre- 
serve its  vitality.  To  avoid  this  disaster,  men  seek  the  com- 
pany of  their  fellows,  read  books,  go  to  the  theatre,  get  drunk, 
fall  into  diverse  sins.  A  German  professor  has  said  that  con- 
sciousness of  self  is  the  great  mistake  of  the  universe.  How- 
ever that  may  be,  it  certainly  is  the  dread  of  man.  In  the 
day  he  drives  it  out  by  work  and  by  play,  and  in  the  night 
he  drowns  it  in  sleep.  Man  is  that  paradox  who  is  most 
himself  when  not  himself.  Man  must  lose  himself  in  his 
occupations,  or  he  will  lose  himself  in  his  cups.  Paul  bids 
him:  "Be  not  drunk  with  wine,  but  be  intoxicated  with  the 
spirit." 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  81 

There  is  the  madness  of  God  as  well  as  the  madness  of  the 
brute.  Man  may  rise  above  himself  as  well  as  sink  below 
himself.  Religion  cannot  exclude  Dionysus  from  the  temples 
of  the  gods.  It  may  subordinate  Dionysus  to  Apollo,  if  it 
can;  but  it  will  have  Dionysus  whether  or  no.  Grape  juice 
is  no  substitute  for  wine,  because  in  grape  juice  there  is  no 
intoxication.  If  our  temperance  reformers  would  be  success- 
ful, they  must  make  life  as  inspiring  as  wine.  Men  have 
been  so  intoxicated  with  the  spirit  of  humanity  that  they 
have  been  as  drunkards,  beside  themselves,  oblivious  to  the 
restraints  of  consciousness.  Then  we  have  St.  Bernard  so 
drunk  with  the  spirit  that  he  walks  all  day  on  the  shores  of 
Lake  Leman  and  never  sees  the  water;  we  have  St.  Francis 
talking  to  the  birds  as  if  he  were  a  silly  man  befuddled  by 
his  drink ;  we  have  the  Greek  philosopher  running  naked 
through  the  streets,  intoxicated  by  a  thought. 

Man  must  worship  at  the  shrine  of  both  Dionysus  and 
Apollo.  He  must  be  sane,  but  not  too  sane.  A  little  mad- 
ness now  and  then  is  granted  to  the  sanest  men. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

The  Fall  of  the  Greek  Dynasty 

The  charm  of  the  Greek  religion  is  found  in  its  variety. 
The  fertile  imagination  of  this  branch  of  the  Aryan  race  has 
made  the  world  its  debtor  for  all  time.  It  has  peopled  the 
sky  and  the  earth  and  the  seas  with  divinities.  The  constel- 
lations in  the  sky  were  the  children  of  the  god  Uranos;  the 
waves  of  the  ocean  were  the  horses  of  Poseidon ;  the  crimson 
clouds  of  the  dawn  were  the  steeds  of  Apollo;  the  freshening 
breeze  of  the  morning  was  the  breath  of  Athena ;  the  noonday 
clouds  were  the  chariots  of  Zeus,  who  rode  the  storm,  flashed 
in  the  lightning,  and  bellowed  in  the  thunder.  In  the  night 
Uranos  walked  with  his  children ;  in  the  day  Chronos  played 
with  the  hours. 


82  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

The  Greek  mind  had  an  almost  fatal  facility  in  this  power 
of  personification.  There  was  nothing  in  nature  so  great 
that  the  Greek  thought  could  not  mould  it  into  the  fashion 
of  a  man  and  call  it  a  god ;  nothing  so  little  that  it  did  not 
seem  to  him  divine.  Beside  his  major  and  his  minor  gods 
he  had  nymphs  and  satyrs  and  dryads  innumerable.  Every 
fountain  had  its  Arethusa,  every  mountain  stream  its  Alpheus. 

In  its  variety  the  Greek  religion  was  a  counterpart  of  nat- 
ure, as  nature  was  manifested  in  the  mountains  and  valleys, 
in  the  fountains  and  streams,  in  the  bays  and  islands  of  the 
Greek  peninsula  and  archipelago.  This  land  with  its  moun- 
tains separating  valley  from  valley,  with  its  deep  seas  dividing 
land  from  land,  was  the  natural  home  of  individualism.  Each 
projection  into  the  sea  stood  alone;  each  valley  was  a  world 
by  itself.  Athens  and  Sparta  evolved  distinct  and  antagon- 
istic civilizations. 

It  is  this  variety  that  gives  to  Greece  its  abiding  beauty 
and  interest.  It  is  this  which  is  the  source  of  its  weakness, 
— the  reason  of  its  short-lived  glory.  This  lack  of  unity  was 
the  cause  of  the  early  decline  and  final  subjection  of  Greece 
to  a  civilization  lacking  altogether  variety  and  beauty,  but 
having  strength  and  unity. 

The  Greek  civilization  was  in  its  political  and  religious 
life  without  any  unifying  element.  Zeus  was  never  quite  the  God 
but  only  a  god.  He  was  first  among  equals,  but  any  wor- 
shipper could  prefer  to  him  the  least  of  the  gods  of  Olympus 
and  still  be  orthodox.  During  the  whole  of  the  later  period 
the  foreign  cult  of  Dionysus  rivaled  in  popularity  the  purely 
Grecian  cult  of  Apollo.  This  itch  for  variety  was  the  mother 
of  an  insatiable  curiosity.  As  St.  Luke  said :  "The  Athen- 
ians had  no  other  desire  but  to  hear  or  tell  some  new  thing." 
Any  god  was  welcome,  so  only  he  was  a  new  god. 

This  lack  of  unity  in  religion  was  but  the  reflex  of  the 
unity  that  was  wanting  in  the  political  life  of  the  country. 
The  city  states  of  Greece  were  each  independent  and  contin- 
ually at  war  with  one  another.  There  was  a  brief  period 
of  unity  under  the  leadership  of  Athens  to  resist  the  Persian 
invasion ;  but  when  this  danger  was  past  the  two  most  im- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  83 

portant  city  states  of  the  Hellenic  civilization,  Athens  and 
Sparta,  engaged  in  a  war  for  supremacy,  in  which  neither 
prevailed,  but  in  which  both  were  exhausted.  Weakened  by 
division,  depleted  by  fratricidal  strife,  the  Greek  city  states 
came  easily  under  the  dominion  of  the  half  barbarian  province 
of  Macedon.  But  even  the  Macedonian  monarchy  did  not 
supply  to  Greece  the  lacking  element  of  unity. 

Had  he  lived,  Alexander  could  not  and  would  not  have 
unified  Greece ;  he  was  himself  without  a  sense  of  essential 
unity.  His  mind  was  set  upon  conquest  not  upon  unification. 
When  he  died  his  empire  fell  to  pieces  at  once,  and  it  was 
left  to  another  and  a  greater  genius  to  unify  the  Western 
world.  The  Greek  mind  sought  vainly  in  philosophy  for  a 
principle  of  unification.  One  school  after  another  set  itself 
to  the  solution  of^this  problem.  But  fire  and  water,  earth 
and  sky,  mind  and  matter,  were,  in  the  Greek  thought,  separ- 
ated by  impassable  gulfs.  The  flux  of  Heraclitus  was  a 
process,  the  absolute  of  Plato  an  abstraction,  neither  of  which 
could  become  a  principle  of  unity  strong  enough  to  reduce 
the  chaos  of  the  world  to  subjection.  Philosophy  could  not 
then  and  cannot  now  give  unity  to  life.  It  has  been  the  his- 
tory of  philosophy  that  each  system  is  antagonistic  to  every 
other  system,  so  that  in  philosophy  we  have  all  the  variety, 
all  the  beauty,  and  all  the  weakness  of  the  Greek  civilization. 

The  Greek  gods  lost  their  hold  on  the  life  of  the  people  as 
a  consequence  of  this  vain  effort  at  unification.  No  one 
of  them  was  able  to  prevail  over  the  other.  As  we  have  seen, 
the  poets  immortalized  the  sins  of  their  youth  and  condemned 
them  to  a  futile  old  age.  If  Apollo  possessed  a  clean  record 
and  an  eternal  youth,  he  was,  as  all  gods  are  apt  to  be,  hand1- 
icapped  by  his  own  infallibility.  His  oracles  at  Delphi  and 
elsewhere  had  committed  him  to  so  many  statements  and 
positions  that  the  critical  reason  had  little  difficulty  in  dis- 
crediting his  wisdom.  It  was  this  critical  reason  that  played 
havoc  with  all  the  divinities  of  Greece.  Some  of  them  it 
argued  and  some  of  them  it  laughed  out  of  existence.  The 
gods  were  an  offense  to  the  serious  and  a  jest  on  the  lips  of 
the  gay. 


84  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

The  Greek  civilization,  in  its  later  period,  was  lacking  in 
seriousness  because  it  was  wanting  in  unity.  Anything  like 
settled  convictions  are  impossible  to  the  ultra-curious  mind. 
The  desire  for  the  new  leads  to  the  constant  uprooting  of 
the  old.  One  phase  of  religious  faith  has  hardly  time  to 
make  itself  heard  in  the  market-place  before  it  is  drowned 
out  by  the  noise  of  a  fresh  arrival.  In  all  periods  of  transi- 
tion we  find  this  lack  of  seriousness.  One  form  of  religion 
is  so  constantly  discrediting  other  forms  that  they  all  fall 
into  the  like  contempt.  This  fate  befell  the  gods  of  the  Greek 
dynasty.  They  fell  from  their  thrones,  the  civilization  over 
which  they  presided  passed  into  a  new  civilization  under  the 
dominion  of  a  new  religion  in  which  the  principle  of  unity 
was  paramount. 

We  turn  away  from  the  gods  of  the  Greek  dynasty  with 
reluctance.  Some  say  they  were  no  gods,  only  the  imagina- 
tions of  men ;  but  what  are  the  imaginations  of  men  but  the 
reflection  of  the  living  God?  The  soul  of  man  is  a  deep, 
still  lake  over  which  the  Infinite  broods  and  in  which  the 
Infinite  is  reflected.  The  reflection  changes  with  the  changing 
times.  By  day  the  mirrored  waters  of  the  soul  reflect  the 
round  disk  of  the  sun,  by  night  the  pointed  stars ;  now  a 
cloud  passes  over  the  surface  and  is  reflected  in  the  deep,  now 
the  blue  of  the  sky  and  the  blue  of  the  lake  are  one,  and  there 
are  really  two  skies  looking  and  smiling  at  each  other. 

To  say  that  a  god  is  imaginary  is  not  to  assert  that  he  is 
unreal ;  it  is  only  to  say  that  he  is  incomplete.  No  body  of 
water  can  reflect  the  sky  as  a  whole.  The  gods  of  the  Greek 
dynasty  may  be  dead  as  individual  deities,  but  they  are  alive 
forevermore  in  that  vision  of  God  which  is  forever  haunting 
the  soul  of  man. 


BOOK  III 
THE  ROMAN  GOD 


CHAPTER    XIX 

Divus  Caesar:    God  of  the  Organization 

The  Greek  religion  of  the  imagination  was  in  the  course 
of  human  events  brought  into  subjection  to  the  Roman  re- 
ligion of  practical  politics.  The  Romans  as  a  people  were 
lacking  in  the  poetic  faculty  which  creates  a  rich  mythology, 
but  they  were  past  masters  of  all  that  relates  to  the  business 
of  daily  life.  Their  genius  for  affairs  gave  them  the  leader- 
ship of  the  Mediterranean  world. 

The  marvelous  success  of  the  city  of  Rome  is  the  open 
secret  of  history.  Rome  was  successful  because  the  city 
of  Rome  was  the  god  of  the  people  of  Rome, — a  god  whom 
they  worshipped  with  an  absolute  devotion.  In  Rome  the 
city  state  became  self-conscious,  self-centered,  self-aggran- 
dizing. 

When  we  first  meet  with  the  Roman  people  they  do  not 
impress  us  with  a  sense  of  their  coming  greatness.  They 
are  a  group  of  Aryan  shepherds  and  herdsmen  who  have  come 
into  Italy,  probably,  by  the  way  of  the  sea,  and  settled  on 
some  low-lying  hills  on  the  river  Tiber,  seventeen  miles  from 
where  it  empties  into  the  Mediterranean.  These  intruders 
are  in  the  last  stages  of  higher  barbarism.  They  have  flocks 
and  herds  that  feed  upon  the  fertile  plains  that  lie  about  their 
settlement;  in  a  rude  way  they  cultivate  the  soil  and  live  a 
simple  pastoral  and  agricultural  life.  They  are  an  unwarlike 
people,  being  content  if  they  can  defend  themselves  in  the 
possession  of  the  land  which  they  occupy.  The  social  organ- 
ization of  these  shepherds  is  that  of  the  family  and  the  clan. 
Each  family  owns  the  land  which  it  tills  in  severalty.  The 
authority  of  the  house-father  as  the  lord  of  the  family  is 
recognized  by  custom  and  sanctioned  by  religion.  The 

87 


88  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

women  are  the  property  of  the  men,  but  arc  not  shut  up 
within  the  confines  of  the  house;  for  a  pastoral  and  agricul- 
tural people  must  make  use  of  its  women  as  workers  in  the 
pasture  and  in  the  field  and  grant  them  the  liberty  demanded 
by  their  occupation. 

Whatever  government  there  might  have  been  outside  of 
the  family  was  of  the  most  primitive  character.  It  consisted 
of  the  leadership  of  the  heads  of  the  leading  families  in  war 
and  in  council.  The  families  had  not  as  yet  developed  through 
the  clan  into  the  state.  The  clans  were,  in  all  probability, 
jealous  of  one  another  and  without  any  center  or  principle 
of  unity,  except  kinship. 

The  religion  of  this  people  was  in  keeping  with  their  social 
and  economic  development, — it  was  the  crudest  form  of  an- 
cestor-and-nature-worship.  The  gods  of  these  hill  tribes 
could  hardly  be  called  gods ;  they  were  devoid  of  personal 
character  and  personal  history.  The  hearth  and  the  door 
and  the  organs  of  generation  were  the  direct  objects  of  wor- 
ship. Religious  feeling  was  centered  upon  the  phenomena 
of  reproduction. 

Professor  Carter,  in  his  valuable  monograph  "The  Relig- 
ious Life  of  Ancient  Rome,"  says : 

"The  essential  feature  of  this  religion  was  its  social  char- 
acter. Religion  was  not  a  personal  matter,  nay,  it  could  not 
be,  because  the  very  concept  of  personality  was  in  its  infancy. 
There  was  no  individual  initiative  or  volition  in  the  whole 
matter.  Man  did  not  choose  his  god  any  more  than  he 
chose  his  parents.  He  was  born  into  a  circle  of  gods  ready- 
made  for  him  just  as  he  was  born  into  a  set  of  human  rela- 
tionships. The  fulfillment  of  his  duty  to  those  gods  was 
a  normal  and  natural  function  of  his  life...  In  the  intensity 
of  the  struggle  for  physical  existence  these  powers  of  reproduc- 
tion must  be  propitiated,  that  man  and  beast  and  mother 
earth  might  bring  forth  plentifully  after  their  kind.  This 
physical  note,  the  instinct  of  propagation  is  dominant  in  all 
the  early  religion  of  Rome." ' 

1  "Religions  Life  of  Ancient  Rome,"  Carter. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  89 

To  this  day  there  is  this  vein  of  coarseness  in  Italian 
life,— jokes  at  weddings  and  the  like  that  are  vestiges  of  the 
thought  that  inspired  the  ancient  religion.  These  hill  tribes 
did  not  in  this  early  period  rise  to  anything  like  a  definite 
worship  of  the  higher  powers  of  nature  as  such.  No  Uranos 
carried  his  children  stars  in  their  sight,  no  Chronos  played 
with1  the  hours;  all  such  sentimentality  lay  outside  the 
comprehension  of  these  plain  folk  who  had  no  use  for  a  god 
who  could  not  be  of  use  to  them. 

That  such  a  people  should  have  been  reserved  for  a  sublime 
destiny  is,  as  I  have  said,  the  open  secret  of  history.  Their 
character  was  their  destiny.  They  saw  that  living  was  de- 
pendent not  on  gods  far  away  but  on  powers  that  were  near- 
est to  man.  The  gods  were  to  be  found  in  the  fire  on  their 
hearth ;  in  the  loins  of  the  man  and  the  womb  of  the  woman ; 
in  the  corn  in  the  ear  and  in  the  wine  in  the  vat.  If  these 
gods  were  propitious,  what  mattered  if  the  others  were  pleased 
or  no? 

This  people  would  never  have  entered  upon  the  career 
that  made  them  famous,  if  they  had  been  left  to  their  own 
devices.  They  were  without  any  principle  of  unity,  without 
any  urge  of  ambition. 

About  five-hundred-and-fifty  years  before  the  present  era 
they  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  beaten  in  war  and  brought 
under  subjection  by  a  people  much  farther  advanced  than 
themselves  in  all  that  relates  to  the  social,  religious  and  po- 
litical life  of  mankind. 

It  is  singular  fact  of  history  that  Rome  was  not  founded 
by  the  Romans.  The  creation  of  the  city  was  the  work  of 
the  Etruscans,  a  people  of  mixed  race  that  came  from  the 
north  who  for  a  time  were  the  dominant  people  of  the  Italian 
peninsula.  The  Romulian  gens  of  the  Etruscan  nation  were 
the  leaders  in  the  work  of  subduing  the  hill  tribes  on  the 
Tiber.  They  crowded  the  people  into  a  common  center, 
built  a  wall,  set  up  a  king,  and  called  the  name  of  the  city 
which  they  founded  Roma,  being  as  it  was  the  city  of  the 
Romulians.  For  a  period  the  Etruscan  kings  reigned  in 
Rome.  The  tribes  or  clans  were  unified  in  a  common  citizen- 


90  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

ship.  The  unity  of  the  city  found  expression  in  the  worship 
of  Jupiter  Optimus  Maximus  Capitolinus.  In  due  time  these 
kings,  having  made  of  the  clans  a  city,  giving  them  a  name 
and  a  place  in  the  earth,  were  dethroned  and  exiled ;  and  that 
wonderful  political  organism  known  as  the  Roman  Republic 
came  to  its  birth. 

The  name  of  the  new  organization  was  indicative  of  its 
character.  It  was  a  respublica, — a  public  thing,  which  re- 
duced all  private  things  to  subordination.  It  was  the  organ- 
ization demanding  the  absolute  submission  and  devotion  of 
the  individual.  In  the  Greek  civilization  the  emphatic  word 
in  politics  was  demos, — the  people.  The  city  in  theory  ex- 
isted for  the  sake  of  the  people,  not  the  people  for  the  city. 
In  Rome  the  emphasis  was  laid  upon  the  city;  it  was  not  the 
people  who  gave  importance  to  the  city;  it  was  the  city  that 
gave  dignity  to  the  people.  Romanus  sum  was  the  proud 
boast  of  every  Roman.  Rome  was,  thus,  to  a  Roman  his  god  in 
whom  he  lived,  moved  and  had  his  being.  The  household  gods 
were  worshipped  at  the  family  altar ;  the  old  divinities  of  the  field 
had  their  temple  and  their  sacrifices,  but  all  other  religion 
was  anaemic  when  compared  with  the  red-blooded  religion 
of  the  State.  In  Rome  patriotism  was  a  passion,  compelling 
a  man  to  forsake  father  and  mother,  wife  and  children, 
house  and  land,  even  life  itself,  at  the  call  of  the  State. 
This  spirit  of  patriotic  devotion  was  developed  and  deep- 
ened by  the  history  of  the  city.  Rome  was  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end  of  her  career  engaged  in  a  struggle  for  po- 
litical existence  and  political  extension.  She  had  at  the  first 
to  maintain  her  independence  by  a  life-and-death  grapple 
with  the  Etruscan  kings.  The  story  of  Lars  Porsena  and 
Horatius  at  the  Bridge  has  been  recited  in  every  red  school- 
house  since  Macaulay  wrote  his  swinging  lines  celebrating 
that  event.  The  poetical  narrator  has  caught  the  very  spirit 
of  Roman  religion  in  the  words  of  Horatius  to  the  Consul 
as  he  goes  out  to  hold  the  bridge  against  the  coming  of  the 
Tuscan:  "To  every  man  upon  this  earth  death  cometh  soon 
or  late."  To  die  soon  for  the  State  is  better  than  to  die  late 
for  self.  Men  die ;  Rome  lives. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  91 

From  the  first  the  Roman  had  a  profound  belief  in  the 
eternity  of  his  city.  No  sooner  had  Rome  been  delivered 
from  the  Etruscan  dominion  than  she  had  to  consolidate  and 
secure  her  safety  by  incorporating  into  her  policy  and  citi- 
zenship the  towns  of  Latium.  From  the  beginning  it  was 
the  policy  of  Rome  not  only  to  conquer  but  to  assimilate. 
Little  by  little,  for  her  security,  she  extended  her  borders  until 
they  embraced  first  Italy  and  then  the  Mediterranean  world. 

Up  to  the  close  of  the  second  Punic  War  every  conflict  in 
which  Rome  engaged  was  primarily  a  struggle  for  existence. 
After  the  second  Punic  War  the  city  entered  upon  its  career 
of  extension,  which  lasted  until  the  reign  of  Trajan,  in  the 
II  Century  A.  D.,  when  the  city  entered  once  more  on  the 
struggle  for  existence,  which  ended  in  her  transformation 
from  the  city  of  the  Caesars  into  the  city  of  the  Popes. 

Throughout  her  entire  history  the  primary  business  of 
Rome  was  politics.  Rome  was  never  an  artistic,  a  literary, 
or  a  commercial  center;  she  did  not  develop  artists  or  poets, 
nor  philosophers,  nor  merchants;  the  products  of  her  civil- 
ization were  politicians  and  lawyers.  Government  being  her 
province,  she  was  the  mother  of  jurisprudence.  Until  Caesar, 
Rome  never  produced  a  general  of  the  first  rank,  and  even 
Caesar  was  more  of  a  politician  than  a  soldier.  As  a  conse- 
quence of  this  devotion  to  politics  Rome  evolved  a  vast  po- 
litical organization  adequate  to  the  government  of  the  world. 

The  Civil  Wars  of  the  Republic  were  struggles  within  the 
city  for  the  control  of  this  world-embracing  political  machine. 
After  the  expulsion  of  the  Etruscan  king,  the  government 
of  Rome  reverted,  as  nearly  as  it  could  under  the  new  con- 
ditions, to  the  old  ways  of  the  Aryan  clan.  The  business 
of  government  was  in  the  keeping  of  the  House-Fathers,  the 
heads  of  the  old  families.  The  Consuls  were  chosen  from 
the  House-Fathers  to  execute  the  laws.  The  real  power 
was  in  and  with  the  Senate,  which  was  composed  wholly, 
at  first,  of  the  heads  of  the  old  houses. 

The  internal  history  of  Rome  is  a  story  of  the  ceaseless 
effort  on  the  part  of  the  people  to  limit  the  power  of  the 
patricians  and  to  make  the  government  of  Rome  popular 


92  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

instead  of  aristocratic.  The  popular  party  triumphed,  but 
only  by  clothing  its  leader  with  all  the  powers  of  government 
which  it  had  taken  from  the  aristocracy.  When  Caesar,  the 
leader  of  the  popular  party,  defeated  Pompey  and  the  aristo- 
crats on  the  field  of  Pharsalus,  then  Caesar  was  the  master  of 
Rome  and  the  god  of  Rome.  The  death  of  Caesar  did  not 
for  a  moment  arrest  the  revolution,  of  which  he  was  the 
embodiment,  and  by  which  the  constitution  of  Rome  was 
changed  from  that  of  an  aristocratic  republic  to  an  imperial 
democracy.  The  revolution  was  not  so  much  political  as  it  was 
religious.  The  worship  of  Rome  was  intensified,  and  was  trans- 
formed into  the  worship  of  the  Caesar.  Julius  was  deified, 
a  month  in  the  year  was  made  sacred  to  him,  and  all  the 
emperors  after  him  took  his  name  and  shared  in  his  divine 
personality. 

The  worship  of  Rome  in  the  days  of  the  republic  and  the 
worship  of  the  Caesar  in  the  days  of  the  empire  was  the 
real  religion  of  the  Roman  people.  Not  that  Rome  was 
neglectful  of  the  other  gods, — far  from  it.  She  gave  most 
punctilious  attention  to  every  minutia  of  ritual  which  the 
worship  of  the  least  of  the  gods  demanded.  The  Roman 
would  worship  any  god  and  every  god  in  the  hope  that  such 
god  would  be  of  assistance  to  Rome  in  her  warfare  with  the 
world  and  helpful  to  his  party  in  Rome  in  its  struggle  for 
supremacy. 

During  the  second  Punic  War  the  Romans  were  told  that 
if  they  would  bring  the  Mother  of  the  gods  from  Syria,  she 
would  by  her  presence  drive  Hannibal  out  of  Italy.  She 
was  sent  for  at  once.  Publius  Scipio,  as  the  best  man  in 
Rome,  received  her  sacred  stone  with  divine  honors,  the  chief 
of  the  matrons  of  the  city  became  her  servants,  and  Hannibal 
was  driven  out  of  Italy. 

The  Roman  never  hesitated  to  appropriate  a  god  wherever 
he  could  find  one ;  he  consulted  the  oracle  of  Apollo  at  Delphi ; 
having  no  sacred  writings  of  his  own,  he  appropriated  the 
Sibylline  Books ;  his  gods  being  without  personality  or  his- 
tory, he  identified  them  with  the  gods  of  Olympus  and  clothed 
them  in  the  poetic  garments  of  the  Greek  mythos.  Cicero 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  93 

boasts  of  this  religiosity  of  the  Roman;  speaking  in  the  Sen- 
ate, he  said : 

"O  Conscript  Fathers,  boast  of  ourselves  as  we  may,  yet 
we  must  confess  that  the  Greeks  surpass  us  in  the  arts,  the 
Gauls  are  more  robust,  the  Carthaginians  are  more  adroit, 
but  we,  Conscript  Fathers,  surpass  all  people  in  our  belief 
that  the  affairs  of  men  are  in  the  keeping  of  the  gods  and  in 
our  devotion  to  the  worship  of  the  divinities." 

And  it  was  even  so.  But  religion  in  Rome  was  essentially 
political ;  the  gods  were  conciliated  in  the  interests  .  of  the 
State.  "The  religion  of  the  Romans,"  says  Walter  Pater, 
"was  not  something  to  be  known,  not  something  to  be  be- 
lieved, not  something  to  be  loved,  but  something  to  be  done 
at  a  certain  time,  in  a  certain  place,  after  a  certain  way." 
What  Romans  really  worshipped  was  Rome  and  all  the  gods 
as  tributary  to  Rome. 

During  the  later  Republic  and  the  early  Empire  Rome 
brought  all  the  gods  from  all  the  countries  round  about  and 
placed  them  in  the  Roman  Pantheon.  There,  separated  each 
from  his  own  land  and  his  own  people,  these  gods  crowded  to- 
gether, higgledy-piggledy,  one  upon  another,  humiliated  and 
forgotten,  lost  all  interest  in  their  own  divinity  and  so  slowly 
faded  away. 

The  real  god  that  superseded  them  all  was  Divus  Caesar: 
the  God  of  the  Organization.  This  god  was  no  figment  of 
the  imagination,  living  beyond  the  sky ;  he  was  a  dread  reality, 
present  in  every  open  place  and  in  every  nook  and  corner 
of  the  Roman  world.  He  could  reward  and  punish ;  at  his 
word  men  were  cast  down;  at  his  word  the)'-  were  lifted  up. 
At  a  whisper  of  Tiberius  in  Capri  men  died  in  the  palaces 
of  Rome  or  were  exiled  to  the  regions  of  Sythia.  The  Caesar 
spake  the  word  in  Rome  and  villages  were  laid  waste  in  the 
fens  of  Ely  and  a  city  was  founded  on  the  banks  of  the 
Thames. 

The  terror  of  the  Roman  organization  was  in  its  compre- 
hensiveness. It  embraced  the  whole  of  the  then  known 


94  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

world  and  looked  after  every  detail  of  life.  There  was  no 
escape  from  it  except  by  death,  and  even  after  death  the  god 
of  the  organization  could  wreack  its  vengeance  on  the  children 
of  the  man  whom  it  hated.  And  the  blessings  of  the  organ- 
ization were  as  effective  as  its  curses.  It  could  and  did  give 
peace  to  a  distracted  Europe;  it  conferred  the  glory  of  its 
citizenship  and  the  benefits  of  its  civilization  upon  a  bar- 
barian people;  its  laws  were  the  common  protection  of  the 
rich  and  the  poor;  it  made  of  the  peasant  a  citizen,  and  of 
the  provincial  an  emperor. 

For  more  than  five  centuries  Rome  presided  as  a  god  over 
the  destinies  of  the  Western  world.  The  image  of  her  Caesar 
was  at  every  crossroad, — to  burn  incense  upon  the  altar  of 
her  Cassar  the  one  necessary  act  of  devotion. 

The  worship  of  this  God  of  the  Organization  always  has 
been  and  is  now  the  worship  of  the  majority.  Other  gods 
of  courtesy  there  may  be,  but  the  God  of  the  Organization 
is  the  real  god.  He  has  continuity  and  ubiquity.  He  can 
reward  and  punish ;  and  whether  he  be  Imperial  or  Papal 
Rome,  whether  he  be  Tammany  Hall  or  the  Old  Guard,  in- 
carnate in  Caesar,  Pope,  or  Boss,  he  demands  and  receives  the 
obeisance  of  men  as  the  price  of  their  peace  and  prosperity 
in  the  earth. 


CHAPTER    XX 

The  Rise  of  the  Semitic  Dynasty 

The  God  of  the  Organization  can  buy  or  enforce  the  wor- 
ship of  the  lips,  but  he  cannot  attract  the  worship  of  the 
heart ;  for  though  men  may  fawn  upon  him  for  his  favors,  or 
crouch  before  him  in  their  fears,  they  can  never  love  him. 
The  worship  of  the  organization  is  death  to  all  idealism  and 
to  all  inspiration.  Under  bondage  to  this  Moloch,  men  can- 
not think  with  their  own  minds,  love  after  their  own  desires, 
nor  act  in  accordance  with  their  own  judgment.  If  they  are 
organization  men,  then  the  organization  thinks  for  them,  loves 
and  hates  for  them,  and  tells  them  what  to  do.  Life  and 
organization  are  necessary  to  each  other,  and  yet  they  must 
be  always  in  conflict.  Organization  seeks  to  stifle  life  and 
life  to  destroy  organization.  Organization  limits  life,  and 
life  outgrows  organization. 

The  vast  and  perfect  organization  of  the  Roman  world 
arrested  the  development  of  life.  After  the  brief  efflorescence 
of  the  Augustan  period  the  Roman  world  entered  upon  a 
decline  that  ended  in  death.  What  little  originality  the 
Roman  mind  possessed  was  forbidden  exercise.  The  watch- 
ful jealousy  of  the  organization  stamped  out  anything  that 
had  the  appearance  of  genius.  In  the  II  Century  there  was 
a  brief  afterglow  of  intellectual  activity  that  found  its  man- 
ifestation in  the  writings  of  Tacitus  and  in  the  meditations 
of  Marcus  Aurelius;  but  after  that  came  the  darkness.  The 
God  of  the  Organization  held  the  soul  in  thrall ;  the  fear  of 
him  and  the  dread  of  him  were  upon  all  the  Roman  world. 
Men  did  not  seek  distinction,  for  distinction  meant  death ; 
only  the  obscure  were  safe,  and  they  because  they  were  be- 
yond and  beneath  the  care  of  this  grim  god  who  ruled  as 
prince  in  the  city. 

97 


98  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

The  old  civilization  of  the  city-state  was  sick  unto  death. 
It  had,  like  all  organizations,  within  itself  the  cause  of  its 
destruction.  The  industrial  system  was  based  upon  a  gross 
injustice,  the  city-state  was  the  organization  of  the  leisure, 
propertied  classes,  whereby  they  might  secure  for  themselves 
the  benefits  accruing  from  the  social  order.  They  were  the 
consumers  of  what  others  produced;  they  lived  upon  the  un- 
requited labor  of  their  slaves.  These  slaves  were  men  and 
women  of  their  own  or  kindred  race,  taken  in  war  or  born 
in  servitude,  who  were  allowed  to  live  only  as  they  served 
the  purposes  of  their  masters.  These  slaves  had  no  interest 
whatever  in  the  organization  which  their  masters  had  set 
up;  they  were  the  victims  offered  daily  upon  the  altars  of 
its  luxury,  its  lust,  and  its  cruelty. 

From  the  beginning  of  civilization  this  class  was  outside 
the  law ;  it  had  no  rights ;  only  duties.  The  helots  of  Sparta 
were  whipped  and  massacred  as  a  part  of  the  education  of 
•  the  youth  of  Sparta.  The  City  of  Athens  sent  its  slaves, 
naked,  into  its  silver  mines  and  kept  them  there,  deprived 
of  the  light  of  the  sun  and  the  love  of  women,  until  they  died. 
Crassus  of  Rome  inflicted  the  like  cruelty  upon  thousands 
of  slaves  whom  he  worked  to  death  in  his  mines  in  Sardinia. 
The  industrial  system  of  ancient  civilization  was  wasteful  of 
human  labor  and  human  life.  Slave  labor  is  always  the  most 
uneconomical  kind  of  labor, — a  slave  is  hardly  ever  worth 
his  keep.  The  old  civilization  was  dying,  and  its  gods  were 
dying  with  it. 

Down  in  that  underworld  of  slaves  a  new  religion  was 
gendering  and  coming  to  the  birth.  In  the  slave  class  virtues, 
which  to  the  master  class  were  not  virtues  but  vices,  were 
in  course  of  evolution.  The  slave,  if  he  is  to  exist,  must  be 
obedient  and  patient  and  long-suffering;  he  must  not  give 
railing  for  railing  but,  contrarywise,  blessing.  The  slaves 
must  help  one  another  to  bear  the  miseries  of  their  slavery  ; 
they  must  have  their  songs  in  the  night;  they  must  wash 
each  other's  wounds  with  water,  having  no  oil  or  wine.  Hav- 
ing food  and  raiment,  they  must  be  therewith  content.  He 
that  hath  two  coats  must  give  to  him  that  has  none.  '  The 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  99 

slave  must  live  for  the  day;  the  morrow  is  not  his.  All  the 
virtues  of  humanity  and  mutuality  are  slave  virtues,  engen- 
dered in  slave  quarters  as  means  of  protection  against  the 
fierceness  of  their  masters.  They  are  as  lambs  in  the  midst 
of  wolves;  they  must  be  as  wise  as  serpents  and  as  harmless 
as  doves.. 

The  god  of  the  master  class  cannot  be  the  god  of  the  sub- 
ject class.  The  sacrifices  of  the  one  are  the  abomination  of 
the  other.  The  master  thinks  of  humanity  as  degradation ; 
to  the  slave  it  is  salvation;  the  master  cannot  be  pitiful  and 
be  a  master;  the  slave  must  be  pitiful,  if  he  is  a  slave.  If 
he  pity  nothing  else,  he  will  pity  his  own  bowed  head  that 
dares  not  lift  itself  for  fear  of  an  insult.  Everything  in  the 
slave's  life  is  antipathetic  to  the  master,  so  that  they  cannot 
bow  before  the  same  altar  nor  eat  of  the  same  sacrifice. 

So  it  came  to  pass  that  while  the  god  of  the  Imperial  or- 
ganization was  receiving  the  adoration  of  the  higher  and 
leisure  classes,  another  god  was  calling  forth  the  enthusiastic 
worship  of  the  subject  and  working  class.  This  god,  like 
themselves,  was  a  child  of  poverty  and  obscurity;  he  came 
of  a  people  to  whom  bondage  was  a  birthright;  whose  his- 
tory is  one  long  story  of  captivity,  exile,  disfranchisement,  and 
endurance  of  contempt. 

When  history  first  takes  notice  of  this  people,  they  are  a 
band  of  Semite  shepherds,  wandering  in  the  desert  regions  of 
North  Arabia.  In  that  arid  land  they  have  a  bitter  struggle 
for  existence.  Their  life  is  necessarily  limited  to  the  barest 
subsistence ;  they  live  in  tents ;  they  eat  the  wild  fruits ;  they 
drink  water.  They  have  never  developed  through  the  tribe 
into  the  clan  and  state.  Their  men  are  polygamous,  their 
women  subjected  and  despised ;  male  children  are  desired 
as  sources  of  strength,  and  the  son  of  the  concubine  is  on 
a  level  with  the  son  of  the  wife.  They  have  no  government 
except  a  loose  chieftainship  and  a  reverence  and  recognition 
of  the  rights  of  age. 

Their  religion  is  animistic;  they  worship  stones  and  meet 
with  their  gods  in  mountain  places  and  in  groves.  They 
offer  human  and  animal  sacrifices  to  their  deities,  and  devote 


100  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

themselves  to  the  service  of  their  gods  by  mutilation.  When 
they  emerge  into  history  they  have  only  one  distinctive  char- 
acteristic and  that  is  their  tribal  consciousness.  The  tribe 
and  not  the  family  is  the  unit  of  organization. 

The  tribe  had  its  legendary  origin  in  the  remote  past  in 
the  enforced  or  voluntary  migration  of  its  putative  ancestor 
from  the  plains  of  Mesopotamia  into  the  highlands  of  Syria. 
They  are  the  children  of  Abraham,  taking  their  tribal  name, 
however,  not  from  Abraham,  but  from  his  grandson  Jacob; 
who  wrestled  and  prevailed  and  became  a  prince  with  God. 
Because  of  this,  these  wandering  Bedouin  shepherds  called 
themselves  the  Bene-Israel  (the  sons  of  Israel)  and  as  Israel- 
ites are  they  known  to  this  day.  - 

The  tribal  consciousness  of  Israel  was  even  more  intense 
than  the  civil  consciousness  of  Rome.  Through  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  thirty  centuries  it  has  been  the  dominant  factor  in 
their  lives.  Because  of  this  devotion  to  the  tribe,  this  people 
were  never  able  to  evolve  into  the  city-state.  While  they 
have  produced  some  great  statesmen,  yet  as  a  people  they 
have  no  genius  for  politics.  With  a  marvelous  power  of 
tribal  persistence  and  tribal  expansion,  they  have  never  created 
a  nationality.  From  the  beginning  of  their  history  down  to 
the  present  day  they  have  been  wanderers  on  the  face  of  the 
earth ;  strangers  in  a  land  that  is  not  theirs.  Their  tribal 
consciousness  has  been  their  sole  bond  of  unity,  and  has 
preserved  them  from  the  disintegrating  forces  to  which  all 
other  tribes  have  yielded  up  their  tribal  existence, — a  con- 
sciousness that  has  been  brought  into  conjunction  with  the 
consciousness  of  a  hundred  other  races  and  lived  with  them 
without  losing  its  own  identity.  The  Jew  may  be  a  Babyl- 
onian, an  Egyptian,  a  Greek,  a  Roman,  a  Portuguese,  a  Ger- 
man, a  Russian,  a  Pole,  as  circumstances  determine,  but  he 
is  everlastingly  a  Jew;  as  much  a  son  of  Israel  to-day  as 
when  he  wandered  in  the  deserts  of  Arabia,  five  thousand 
years  ago.  / 

His  religion  was  the  creation  of  his  tribal  consciousness. 
He  unified  his  tribe  in  his  God  and  his  God  in  his  tribe. 
There  was  one  Israel  and  one  God  of  Israel. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        101 

This  unification  of  the  tribe  in  the  God  did  not  come  with- 
out a  struggle.  The  religion  of  the  Israelite,  in  common 
with  that  of  the  Semitic  people,  was  animistic  and  orgiastic. 
His  gods  were  sacred  stones  and  sacred  trees ;  he  worshipped 
the  new  moon,  and  sanctified  the  first  fruits  of  the  harvest. 
His  worship  was  orgiastic  rather  than  ceremonial ;  in  his  re- 
ligious frenzy  he  danced  himself  drunk;  he  cut  himself  with 
knives,  and  lay  all  night  naked  on  the  ground.  But  from 
the  earliest  period  there  was  one  God  greater  than  all  other 
gods,  and  that  was  the  tribe  God,  the  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac, 
and  Jacob. 

By  a  gradual  process  of  elimination  and  assimilation  this 
God  absorbed  all  other  gods  and  became  the  one  god  of 
Israel.  There  is  no  event  in  the  spiritual  history  of  the 
human  race  of  equal  importance  with  this  evolution  of  the 
one  god  out  of  the  tribal  consciousness  of  Israel, — an  event 
more  pregnant  of  future  consequences  than  the  building  of 
Athens,  more  significant  to  human  destiny  that  the  founding 
of  the  City  of  Rome,  was  the  concentration  of  the  affections 
of  the  Bene-Israel  upon  the  tribe  God,  to  the  exclusion  of 
all  other  gods,  so  that  he  only  was  God  and  there  was  no 
god  beside  him. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  for  a  moment  that  these  Bedouin 
shepherds  were  monotheists  in  the  same  sense  that  President 
Eliot  is  a  monotheist ;  for  they  were  not,  in  any  true  sense, 
monotheists  at  all.  Their  God  was  not  the  only  god,  he  was 
their  only  god ;  while  the  nations  had  many  gods,  Israel  wor- 
shipped only  one.  And  this  made  all  the  difference  between 
the  religion  of  the  Jews  and  the  religion  of  the  Gentile ;  their 
religious  emotions  were  diffused,  his  were  concentrated ;  they 
had  a  god  for  each  separate  function  of  life,  he  gave  all  the 
affairs  of  himself  and  his  tribe  into  the  keeping  of  the 
one  God. 

But  if  Israel  had  only  one  God,  he  demanded  that  this  God 
should  have  only  one  people.  God  is  no  more  the  god  of 
Israel  than  Israel  is  the  people  of  God.  If  God  is  jealous 
of  Israel,  Israel  is  equally  jealous  of  God.  This  god  has  no 
existence  or  business  apart  from  this  people;  he  must  give  to 


102  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

them  all  his  time,  all  his  thought,  all  his  care,  all  his  love. 
He  must  fight  their  battles,  give  strength  to  the  loins  of  their 
men,  open  the  wombs  of  the  women,  bless  their  fields,  build 
their  houses,  and  keep  their  cities ;  he  must  raise  up  their 
leaders,  write  their  laws,  and  anoint  their  kings.  The  God 
of  Israel  in  his  prime  was  no  idle  god  in  a  far-away  heaven ; 
he  was  a  present  god,  busy  all  day  with  the  affairs  of  his 
people  and  watching  over  them  all  the  night.  \  It  was  no 
sinecure  to  be  the  God  of  Israel ;  he  had  to  be  up  and  awake 
and  on  duty  twenty-four  hours  in  the  day.J 

It  is  one  of  the  wonders  that  make  human  history  so 
interesting  that  in  the  deification  of  this  tribal  consciousness 
of  Israel  we  have  the  germ  and  the  plasm  of  the  religion  of 
mankind  up  to  the  present  time.  \Who  would  ever  so  much  as 
dream  that  out  of  the  tribal  egoism  of  a  desert  people  such 
a  god  could  be  born?  Yet  it  is  even  so.  The  two  underlying 
religious  principles  of  this  desert  people  are  basic  to  all 
religion.J 

The  first  of  these  is  the  supreme  importance  of  Israel  to 
the  universe;  for  him  the  world  was  created  and  because  of 
him  it  was  to  be  destroyed.  His  life  is  the  one  thing  that 
gives  value  to  all  that  is ;  his  righteousness  is  the  safety  of 
the  city;  his  sin  its  destruction.  Let  him  pass  away,  ^and 
chaos  will  come  again ;  the  earth  will  be  without  form,  and 
void  and  darkness  brood  once  more  on  the  face  of  the  deep. 
This  intense  egoism,  this  unfaltering  belief  in  his  own  prime 
importance,  has  always  been  a  characteristic  of  the  Jew.  It 
has  made  him  the  problem  and  the  fear  of  the  nations ;  he 
will  push  and  push  and  push,  and  nothing  can  hold  him  back. 
He  believes,  with  a  sublime  faith,  in  himself  and  in  his  people, 
and  this  belief  is  of  the  essence  of  his  soul. 

The  second  basic  thought  in  the  mind  of  the  Israelite  was 
his  dependence  on  some  power  outside  himself  for  the  suc- 
cessful issue  of  his  life.  All  things  were  against  him.  He 
wandered  in  the  desert  where  there  was  no  water,  he  lived  in 
a  land  where  there  was  no  corn ;  he  stood  in  fear  of  Moab 
and  Amelek  and  all  the  hill  tribes  of  Syria ;  he  was  exposed 
to  the  heat  day  by  day  and  the  frost  by  night ;  he  had  no  child 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS         103 

in  his  house,  because  his  wife  was  barren.  It  was  this  sense 
of  the  hostility  of  the  world  about  him  that  compelled  this 
sore  bested  man  to  seek  in  the  very  heart  of  that  hostility 
for  a  friend  and  an  ally.  It  was  out  of  this  sense  of  aliena- 
tion that  the  Israelitish  conception  of  God  was  born.  He 
believed  in  his  own  indomitable  soul,  and  with  that  soul  he 
penetrated  behind  all  forms,  modes,  and  shows  of  life,  into 
life  itself  and  made  of  that  life  his  ally  and  his  friend. 

And  these,  that  were  the  basic  principles  of  the  Israelite, 
are  the  foundations  of  all  religion.  Without  the  supreme 
sense  of  the  importance  of  human  life,  religion  cannot  endure 
for  a  moment.J  When  once  man  comes  to  believe  that  he 
is  a  temporary  phenomenon  passing  away  like  a  shadow, 
his  existence  as  the  flight  of  the  bird  leaving  no  pathway; 
when  he  thinks  that  what  he  does  and  what  he  does  not  do  will 
not  matter  a  thousand  years  from  now,  without  a  sense  of  his 
infinity  and  eternity,  man  cannot  hold  to  religion.  "• 

It  is  this  sense  of  the  importance  of  the  life  of  man  to  the 
universe  that  has  made  man  a  religious  being.  In  the  man 
the  universe  centers,  and  from  him  it  radiates.  When  a  man 
has  lost  altogether  his  grip  upon  the  importance  of  his  own 
life  and  on  human  life  in  general  then  his  energies  flag,  his 
spirit  droops,  his  soul  disintegrates,  his  breath  expires.  In 
proportion  to  his  egoism  is  a  man  religious  or  lacking  in 
religion. 

But  his  egoism,  if  it  is  to  prevail  over  a  hostile  world,  must 
ally  itself  with  a  greater  ego  than  itself.  He  must  be  in 
partnership  with  the  great  ego  that  is  hiding  behind  the  little 
egos  and  is  the  ruler  of  them  all.  He  must  say :  "I  and 
the  Father  are  one."  He  must  lay  hold  of  the  secret  force 
of  the  universe  and  wrestle  with  it  as  Jacob  wrestled  at  Jab- 
bock,  and  never  let  go  until  it  blesses  him,  and  makes  him  a 
prince 'with  God.  The  only  possible  religion  is  and  must 
be  based  on  a  partnership  between  God  and  man.  It  was 
this  egoism  that  gave  the  Israelite  the  leadership  of  religion 
in  the  Western  world.  He  made  himself  partner  with  God 
in  the  business  of  life  and  in  all  transactions  banked  upon 
the  unlimited  ability  of  this  partner  to  make  up  for  his  lack. 


104  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

It  was  this  devotion  of  Israel  to  one  God  and  the  equal 
devotion  of  the  one  God  to  the  one  people  that  gave  him  his 
place  in  the  world.  The  Greek  had  a  genius  for  art,  the 
Roman  for  politics,  and  the  Israelite  for  religion.  In  the 
competition  for  religious  supremacy  at  the  close  of  the  classic 
age  the  obscure  god  of  this  obscure  people  prevailed  over 
all  the  gods  of  Greece  and  Rome.  The  Aryan  dynasty 
gave  place  to  the  Semitic  line  of  gods,  of  whom  there  are  ! 
three  who  have  attained  to  the  rank  of  Major  Gods.  These 
are  Jehovah,  Jesus,  and  Mary. 

Jehovah  is  the  spiritual  ancestor  of  Jesus.  His  history 
is  the  story  of  the  evolution  of  the  War  God  of  the  Bene- 
Israel  into  the  God  and  Father  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  He 
is  the  First  Person  in  the  Holy  Trinity  of  Christian  theology. 


CHAPTER    XXI 

The  War  God  of  the  Bene-Israel 

In  studying  the  evolution  of  religion,  we  have  in  every  case 
to  rely  for  our  knowledge  of  its  beginnings  not  upon  authentic 
history,  but  upon  myth  and  legend.  This  fact  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  accuracy  or  extent  of  our  knowledge,  but  only 
with  the  character  of  our  evidence.  Myth  and  legend  are 
sometimes, — and,  indeed,  generally, — far  more  reliable  sources 
of  information  in  all  that  concerns  the  real  life  of  a  people 
than  is  the  so-called  authentic  historical  record.  In  myth 
and  legend  we  have  the  naive  account  which  the  people  give 
of  themselves.  In  history  we  have  this  same  people  pre- 
sented to  us  through  the  medium  of  the  mind  of  the  historian. 
I  The  folklore  of  a  people  is  more  valuable  than  their  records; 
it  is  to  the  historian  what  fossils  are  to  the  geologist.  Give 
us  the  stories  that  the  shepherds  tell  at  the  camp-fire  and  we 
can  reconstruct  the  life  of  a  vanished  people ;  the  rude  pic- 
tures carved  on  the  stones  of  a  cave  are  witness  to  an  age 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        103 

of  the  world.  The  mind  of  the  historian  is  biased ;  the  myth- 
maker  and  the  teller  of  legends  only  repeats  what  he  hears. 
Schultz,  in  hs  "Old  Testament  Theology,"  says: 

"When  we  read  the  myths  and  legends  of  a  people  we  have 
our  ear  on  the  heart  and  our  finger  on  the  pulse  of  that 
people." 

The  myths  of  a  people  record  their  infancy,  their  legends 
tell  the  story  of  their  childhood,  while  their  history  is  the 
record  of  their  adult  life.  The  myth  is  the  story  of  the  world 
as  Dame  Nature  whispers  it  in  the  ears  of  a  baby;  legend  is 
the  same  story  as  it  is  told  to  boys  by  boys  around  a  camp- 
fire;  history  is  that  same  story  delivered  by  a  professor  in 
a  classroom. 

In  the  life  of  the  Israelitish  people  we  find  a  woeful  lack 
of  mythology.  When  we  first  meet  with  them  they  have 
either  passed  out  of  their  babyhood  or  they  never  had  any. 
They  have  nothing  to  tell  us  of  how  the  gods  began  and  how 
the  gods  behaved.  Their  stories  of  creation  are  not  their 
own  but  are  borrowed  very  late  in  their  career  from  a  people 
richer  in  mythology  than  themselves.  We  are  accustomed 
to  think  that  the  Bible  is  full  of  stories  which  we  can  tell  to 
children ;  and  it  is  rich  in  stories  that  boys  delight  in, — stories 
of  slaughter  and  adventure, — but  not  one  single  story  that 
ought  to  be  told  to  a  boy  under  twelve,  and  hardly  one  that  is 
fit  for  a  girl  to  hear. 

But  if  the  Israelitish  people  were  lacking  in  myth,  they 
were  wonderfully  rich  in  legend.  The  tales  told  at  their 
camp-fires  have  become  the  imperishable  literary  treasure  of 
the  world.  It  is  the  story-telling  genius  of  early  Israel  that 
has  made  of  the  heroes  of  Israel  the  heroes  of  mankind. 
Alexander,  Caesar,  Washington,  and  Napoleon, — each  is  the 
heroic  figure  of  a  given  people.  Moses,  David,  and  Jesus  are 
the  heroes  of  humanity.  So  marvelous  is  the  story-telling 
genius  of  this  people  that  they  have  made  the  minor  char- 
acters of  their  history,  a  Doeg  and  an  Abiathar,  more  familiar 
to  us  than  our  next-door  neighbor. 


106  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

The  unification  of  their  tribal  life  in  their  tribal  God  has 
given  to  their  history  a  dramatic  power  and  unity  that  is  without 
parallel.  Jehovah  is  the  Hamlet  of  their  play.  He  makes 
his  entrance  on  their  stage  as  the  War  God  of  the  Bene-Israel. 
He  has  all  the  implacability  of  the  desert,  and  all  the  fierce- 
ness of  the  Arabian  sun  at  noon.  His  hatred  for  all  other 
tribes  is  evidence  of  his  love  for  Israel.  He  makes  war  on 
Amelek  from  generation  to  generation;  he  slaughters  Moab 
while  Moses  holds  up  his  hand,  and  will  not  let  the  sun  go  down 
until  Joshua  has  killed  the  last  of  the  fleeing  Canaanites. 
He  gives  command  to  kill  all  the  men,  but  to  keep  the  women 
and  children  as  slaves.  This  War  God  of  the  Bene-Israel  is 
far  more  savage  than  Ares  or  Mars,  and  has  nothing  of  the 
joviality  of  Woden.  War  with  this  god  is  no  pastime;  it 
is  a  bitter  struggle  to  the  death  of  the  tribal  god  for  tribal 
existence.  He  cannot  indulge  in  the  pleasures  of  the  table 
or  the  bed ;  he  must  leave  wine  and  women  alone  that  he 
may  be  fit  to  fight  the  battles  of  his  people.  The  War  God 
of  the  Bene-Israel  has  neither  wife  nor  child;  he  is  a  lonely 
god,  marching  before  his  people  by  day  and  standing  sentinel 
for  them  by  night. 

This  lonely  god,  without  father  or  mother,  without  wife 
or  children,  was  destined  to  play  a  great  part  in  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  Western  world.  This  loneliness,  at  first  an  accident 
of  his  career,  became  in  the  course  of  his  evolution  of  the 
very  essence  of  his  nature.  v  It  abstracted  from  the  God  of 
Israel  the  phenomena  and  the  scandal  of  sex.  It  made  of 
him  a  male  god  and  a  bachelor  god,  to  whom  woman  was  an 
abomination.  Any  association  of  Jehovah  with  the  notion  of 
sex  was  blasphemy  to  Israel.  The  influence  of  that  attitude 
of  the  War  God  of  the  Bene-Israel  toward  woman  upon  the 
religious  life  of  the  Western  world  has  been  tremendous.  It 
has  in  a  measure  separated  God  from  the  world ;  made  of  him 
not  a  father  but  a  creator;  it  has  introduced  every  kind  of 
confusion  into  Western  theology.  To  this  day  it  is  blas- 
phemy to  think  of  God  as  a  generator  of  life,  as  a  father 
in  any  true  sense  of  children;  and  all  because  Jehovah  the  War 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        107 

God  of  Israel  had  no  use  for  women  because  they  could  not 
fight  and  no  time  for  women  because  he  had  to  fight.  ! 

It  was  undoubtedly  necessary  for  the  due  development  of 
religion  that  the  phenomena  of  sex  should  for  the  time  being, 
be  abstracted  from  the  idea  of  God.  Man,  after  coming  to 
consciousness,  has  so  mismanaged  this  great  function,  in  his 
effort  to  regulate  it, — has  so  involved  it  in  foulness,  making 
of  it  a  shame,  instead  of  glory, — that  he  had  to  lift  his  god 
out  of  all  relation  to  this  region  of  experience,  in  order  that 
he  might  have  for  his  god  a  respect  that  he  could  no  longer 
have  for  himself.  It  was  this  freedom  of  Jehovah  from  all 
the  confusion  and  corruption  of  sex  that  made  him  acceptable 
to  a  sex-weary  world. 

The  War  God  of  the  Bene-Israel  has  carried  his  warlike 
qualities  with  him  through  the  whole  course  of  his  evolution. 
He  has  changed  the  mode  of  his  warfare  but  never  ceased 
from  his  battles.  He  is  the  principle  of  evolution  in  the 
universe, — that  fierce  figure  crying: 

"Sun,  stand  thou  still  upon  Gibeon, 
And  thou,  Moon,  in  the  valley  of  Ajalon!" 
And  the  Sun  stood  still,  and  the  Moon  stayed 
Until  the  Nation  had  avenged  itself  of  its  enemies. 

That  fierce  god,  I  say,  is  still  with  us,  sitting,  like  Caesar, 
in  his  lonely  car,  directing  the  course  of  the  battle  that  rages 
in  the  universe  for  higher  and  better  life.  What  we  call 
peace  is  only  a  change  in  the  region  and  the  method  of 
warfare. 


108  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

CHAPTER   XXII 

Jehovah:  The  Friend  God  of  Abraham 

In  the  good  old  days  before  the  Higher  Criticism  had  come 
to  disturb  the  minds  of  the  simple,  the  Bible,  to  the  ordinary 
reader,  was  one  book  beginning  at  Genesis  and  ending  at 
Revelation.  Each  verse  and  chapter  and  book  was  supposed 
to  be  in  its  proper  place  in  the  order  of  time.  It  was  known 
that  the  various  books  were  written  by  different  men, — Gen- 
esis by  Moses  and  Revelation  by  John ;  but  that  did  not  impair 
the  unity  of  the  Book,  for,  after  all,  Moses  and  John  were 
only  the  penmen  of  the  books  bearing  their  names.  (  The  real 
author  of  all  the  books  was  God.  The  Bible  as  a  whole  was 
his  autobiography, — the  history  of  his  dealings  with  the  chil- 
dren of  men,  as  told  by  himself.  '  In  this  naive  way  the 
simple  mind  accounted  for  that  dramatic  unity  which  the 
Bible  displays.  The  Bible  begins  with  the  creation  and  ends 
with  the  last  judgment,  and  Jehovah  occupies  the  middle  of 
the  stage,  in  both  the  first  and  last  act,  as  creator  and  judge. 

There  is  no  question  as  to  this  dramatic  unity  in  the  Bible. 
We  have  in  it  a  continuous  story  of  the  evolution  of  the  idea 
of  God  in  the  mind  and  soul  of  the  Israelitish  people.  But 
this  evolution  is  not  nearly  so  orderly  as  it  seems  on  the  sur- 
face. The  evolution  itself  was  not  in  a  straight  line,  but, 
like  all  evolutions,  was  spiral  in  its  motion  and  constantly 
returning  on  itself.  The  notion  of  God  as  a  Creator  and  Judge 
did  not  enter  into  the  mind  of  the  Bene-Israel  as  they  wan- 
dered under  the  leadership  of  their  war-god  in  the  mountain 
defiles  of  Arabia.  Such  notions  were  far  too  abstract  and 
recondite  to  find  lodgment  in  their  uncultivated  minds.  It 
was  not  until  toward  the  end  of  their  history,  after  they  had 
come  in  contact  and  been  impregnated  with  the  thought  of 
the  highly  developed  civilization  of  Egypt  and  Babylon,  that 
some  unknown  poet  wrote  the  sublime  poem  of  creation  with 
which  our  Bible  opens,  and  some  priest  living  in  Babylon 
compiled  the  story  of  the  Garden  of  Eden  and  the  Fall  of 
Man  out  of  the  myths  of  the  land  of  his  captivity. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS         109 

The  earliest  legendary  lore  of  the  people  of  Israel  is  to  be 
found  in  the  Books  of  Judges  and  Joshua  and  scattered  here 
and  there  in  Genesis  and  Exodus,  without  regard  to  historical 
order  or  logical  setting.  The  story  of  Abraham,  for  instance, 
is  much  later  in  point  of  time  than  the  story  of  Samson. 
The  legend  moves  upon  a  much  higher  plane  of  thought  and 
feeling.  Samson  is  just  the  kind  of  man  whom  a  half-savage 
desert  tribe  would  deem  a  hero;  he  is  the  embodiment  of 
brute  strength,  directed  by  brute  cunning.  Everything  about 
him  is  outre  and  monstrous.  Abraham  on  the  other  hand,  is 
an  Oriental  gentleman,  of  fine  manners  and  moderate  speech, 
a  man  of  vision, — a  seeker  after  God. 

Whether  Abraham  holds  the  place  in  the  relation  to  Israel 
that  is  assigned  him  in  the  legend  is  open  to  grave  doubts. 
If  Israel  had  a  founder,  then  Israel  himself  is  entitled  to  that 
,  honor.  This  people  are  well  called  the  Sons  of  Israel,  they 
are  in  every  respect  the  children  of  their  father;  the  same 
egoism,  the  same  subtlety,  the  same  patience,  the  same  sub- 
lime faith  in  the  main  chance,  are  seen  in  the  parent  and 
the  offspring. 

Abraham  is  a  man  so  different  in  character  that  I  am 
inclined  to  the  belief  that  he  is  some  stranger,  coming  from 
without  the  tribe,  who  recast  the  religion  of  Israel,  giving 
it  elements  lacking  to  its  original  form,  and  moulding  its  savage 
principles  to  the  uses  of  advancing  civilization.  But,  how- 
ever this  may  be, — whether  he  was  the  founder  of  the  tribe 
as  the  legend  says,  from  whose  altitude  of  thought  and  feeling 
the  tribe  rapidly  descended  until  it  reached  the  level  of  Jacob, 
or  whether,  as  I  surmise,  he  is  some  wayfaring  man,  joining 
the  tribe  of  Israel  and  by  his  life  and  teaching,  profoundly 
modifying  its  constitution  and  religion,  or  whether  his  is  only 
an  ideal  evolved  by  the  best  thought  of  Israel  as  it  passed 
from  lower  into  higher  barbarism  and  civilization, — let  these 
things  be  as  they  may,  yet  to  Abraham  we  owe  that  God 
than  whom  none  has  been  so  ennobling  to  the  spiritual  life 
of  man. 

To  Abraham  God  revealed  himself  in  the  guise  of  a  friend. 
It  was  the  companionship  of  God  that  Abraham  valued ;  other 


110  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

men  sought  after  the  gods  because  they  were  afraid  of  them, 
or  because  they  wanted  the  gods  to  do  something  for  them. 
Abraham  left  his  land,  his  kindred,  and  his  father's  house, 
not  knowing  whither  he  went,  only  that  he  might  enjoy,  un- 
disturbed, the  company  of  God.  When  he  comes  to  the 
mountains  of  Lebanon  he  is  not  afraid  of  their  wild  defiles, 
nor  does  he  shun  their  steep  ascent,  for  they  are  the  ante- 
chambers of  Jehovah,  and  he  calls  the  name  of  that  place 
Jehova  Jireh,  "as  it  is  said  to  this  day,  in  the  mount  of  the 
Lord  it  shall  be  seen." 

This  conception  of  God  as  a  friend  was  impregnated  with 
the  loneliness  of  the  shepherd  life  and  the  austerity  of  the 
desert.  Driving  his  flock  from  oasis  to  oasis,  through  the 
sands,  hiding  them  from  the  noonday  heat  in  the  shadow  of 
some  great  rock  in  that  weary  land,  watching  over  them  by 
night  when  earth  and  sky  were  as  still  as  a  stone,  the  soul  of 
the  man  was  impressed  with  the  awful  loneliness  of  the  univ- 
erse ;  the  stars  and  the  grains  of  shifting  sand,  each  one  by 
itself,  with  no  one  to  speak  to  in  all  the  wide,  wide  world. 
And  the  soul  of  man  alone  in  this  terrible  stillness  with  its 
pent-up  thoughts  and  heart-breaking  emotions ! 

It  was  out  of  this  infinite  loneliness  that  the  friend  God 
came.  Abraham  lifted  up  his  eyes  and  saw  him  walking 
across  the  desert  toward  the  place  where  he  sat  under  the  oaks 
of  Mamre,  and  when  he  saw  him  Abraham  rose  and  made 
haste  and  ran  to  meet  him  and  brought  him  in  and  made  him 
sit  in  the  shade  of  the  oak  at  the  tent  door;  he  brought  water 
for  his  feet  and  oil  for  his  head ;  with  eager  hospitality  Abra- 
ham ran  to  the  herd  and  found  a  calf  of  a  year  old  and  killed 
it  and  made  savory  meat  for  his  guest.  And  sitting  there, 
cross-legged,  this  God  talked  with  Abraham  as  a  friend  with 
his  friend. 

And  of  all  the  gods  there  is  none  like  him,  none  so  welcome 
to  the  soul  of  man.  God  the  Creator,  God  the  Saviour,  God 
the  Judge,  God  the  Wisdom,  God  the  Power,  may  be  all  very 
well,  but  as  for  me,  I  would  give  them  all  for  one  hour  with 
God  the  Friend, — just  some  one  to  speak  to  in  this  vast  void 
of  life ;  some  one  to  sit  with  me  in  the  door  of  my  tent  and 
pass  with  me  the  time  of  day. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  111 

Loneliness  is  of  the  very  warp  and  woof  of  human  life. 
Each  one  of  us  is  born  alone  and  dies  alone ;  each  conscious- 
ness is  wrapped  in  eternal  secrecy,  not  the  wife  of  the  bosom, 
nor  the  child  of  the  loins  can  dispel  the  silence  that  reigns 
in  the  soul.  We  talk  of  things  and  things  and  things,  but 
of  our  very  inner  self  we  cannot  talk,  for  we  ourselves  do  not 
know  ourself  well  enough  to  talk  to  ourself.  And  if  we 
talk,  who  can  hear?  There  is  an  ocean  of  silence  between 
\  soul  and  soul,  just  as  there  is  an  ocean  of  darkness  between 
star  and  star. 

Is  this  silence  to  which  we  listen  the  silence  of  hate  or  the 
silence  of  love,  the  silence  of  hope  or  the  silence  of  despair? 
Is  there  in  it  one  friendly  voice  that  can  speak  to  us  and  dispel 
this  loneliness  that  is  driving  us  mad?  Has  our  soul  a  soul- 
friend  in  the  universe  that  can  share  its  joys  and  soothe  its 
sorrows?  It  was  to  find  this  friend  that  Abraham  left  Ur 
of  the  Chaldees  and  wandered  "lonely  as  a  cloud"  through  the 
hills  of  Syria,  and  counted  his  wanderings  as  nothing  if  his 
Friend  God  walked  with  him  by  the  way  and  sat  with  him  at 
eventide  in  the  door  of  his  tent. 

This  Friend  God  has  done  more  to  comfort  the  soul  of  man 
than  all  the  other  gods  put  together.  When  once  we  have 
seen  him,  we  can  never  be  the  same  afterwards.  He  is 
within  us  and  yet  without  us.  We  sit  in  our  soul  and  look 
in  his  face.  He  is  not  our  god,  he  is  our  guest ;  we  wash 
his  feet  and  anoint  his  head  and  give  him  savory  food.  We 
do  not  ask  anything  of  him,  only  companionship,  only  to  know 
that  he  is  there. 

Each  soul  must  make  friends  with  this  god  for  himself. 
He  is  not  to  be  found  in  temple  or  in  church ;  he  is  not  the 
God  of  the  creed  nor  of  an  organization.  To  ask  a  priest^ 
to  pray  to  him  on  our  behalf  is  a  blasphemous  doubt  of  his 
friendship.  We  cannot  buy  his  friendship  with  gifts  of  money 
nor  with  flattering  word.  It  is  friendship  for  friendship,  or 
it  is  nothing.  "My  soul  is  athirst  for  God,  yea  even  for  the 
living  God.  When  shall  I  come  to  appear  before  the  pres- 
ence of  God?" 


112  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

CHAPTER   XXIII 
The  Bargain  God  of  Jacob 

In  primitive  religious  thought  the  relation  of  a  man  to  his 
god  was  organic.  This  relationship  was  founded  upon  the 
principle  of  generation.  Nowhere  in  archaic  thought  do  we 
find  the  gods  creating;  everywhere  we  behold  them  gener- 
ating. The  gods  themselves  are  generated  out  of  the  forces 
of  nature  and  they  in  turn  generate  divine  men.  The  Eupat- 
ridae  of  Greece  and  the  Patricians  of  Rome  trace  their  des- 
cent from  a  god  as  easily  as  an  Englishman  derives  his  origin 
from  a  Norman  who  came  over  with  the  Conqueror,  or  an 
American  from  one  of  the  prolific  passengers  who  sailed  from 
Plymouth  in  the  Mayflower.  If  one  did  not  have  at  least  one 
god  or  goddess  growing  on  one's  family  tree  one  had  little  to 
bolist  of  in  the  way  of  ancestry.  Caesar  was  a  god  by  inher- 
itance as  well  as  by  acquirement ;  he  had  no  less  a  personage 
than  Venus  for  his  greatest  great-grandmother.  The  deifica- 
tion of  ancestors,  which  was  the  universal  custom  of  the  ar- 
chaic world,  made  divine  paternity  an  essential  article  of 
faith  in  the  religion  of  that  world.  The  household  gods  were 
the  fathers  of  the  house,  and  the  city  gods  the  progenitors  of 
the  founders  of  the  city. 

This  relationship  by  generation  made  the  people  secure  in 
the  love  and  favor  of  the  gods.  In  taking  care  of  his  people 
a  god  was  taking  care  of  his  own.  This  house  was  his 
house  and  these  children  were  his  children,  not  by  legal  right 
but  by  process  of  nature.  The  house  was  founded  upon  his 
bones,  and  the  children  generated  by  his  blood.  For  such  a 
god  to  neglect  his  people  was  a  disgrace  to  his  divinity.  Men 
called  on  their  gods  as  children  call  on  their  parents,  knowing 
that  gods,  like  parents,  have  nothing  else  to  do  than  to  answer 
the  cries  of  their  children. 

As  one  reflects  upon  this  archaic  belief,  one  cannot  but 
wonder  at  its  subtlety  and  essential  truthfulness.  When  man 
looked  out  upon  his  world  and  took  note  of  its  ways  he  saw 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  113 

that  generation  was  the  law  of  life;  he  saw  that  the  fishes  of 
the  sea,  the  birds  of  the  air,  all  creeping  things,  and  beasts 
and  cattle  and  men  and  women  were  each  and  every  one  of 
them  like  poets,  born  and  not  made,  each  new  life  proceeding 
from  an  antecedent  life.  There  was  no  beginning  and  there 
was  no  end,  but  an  eternal  round.  The  gods  as  well  as  men 
came  each  into  being  by  this  process  of  generation.  Thus 
did  the  human  mind,  before  it  was  sophisticated,  anticipate 
the  last  analysis  of  science  and  see  in  generative  evolution 
the  process  by  which  all  things  have  come  to  be  as  they  are. 

It  is  a  distinct  decline  from  this  high  plain  of  thought  to 
that  conception  of  the  relation  of  a  man  to  his  god  which 
has  ruled  so  long  in  the  religion  of  the  Western  world.  Ac- 
cording to  our  way  of  thinking  God  did  not  generate  man, 
he  manufactured  him.  Man  did  not  spring  out  of  the  loins 
of  God,  he  was  simply  the  work  of  his  hands.  There  was 
no  divine  urge,  no  secret  love  in  the  universe  demanding  the 
conception  and  birth  of  man.  No  antecedent  courtship  of 
force  with  force,  of  passion  with  passion,  had  brought  man  to 
the  birth ;  he  was  never  born  at  all,  he  was  just  made. 

The  gods  having  nothing  else  to  do  said:  "Go  to!  let  us 
make  man !"  and  they  made  him.  Man  was  the  creature  and 
God  the  creator,  and  between  these  two  there  was  no  organic 
relation  either  of  origin  or  affection.  This  notion  that  man 
is  the  creation  of  God's  hands  has  in  the  modern  Western 
world  utterly  supplanted  the  archaic  notion  that  man  is  the 
child  of  God's  loins. 

The  conflict  that  has  raged  for  the  last  five-hundred  years 
between  science  and  religion  is  occasioned  by  this  funda- 
mental difference  in  the  conception  of  the  universe.  The  war 
is  waging  between  the  archaic  theory  of  generative  evolution 
and  the  later  theory  of  creationism.  The  one  theory  declares 
that  God  is  a  father,  the  other  that  he  is  a  manufacturer; 
and  between  these  two  theories  there  can  be  no  compromise. 

The  creationist  theory  came  naturally  to  the  Israelitish 
thinkers  of  the  IX  Century  B.  C.  They  had  from  the  first 
eliminated  the  notion  of  generation  from  their  conception  of 
God.  Abraham  was  their  father,  not  Jehovah.  Not  for 


114        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

one  moment  do  they  conceive  of  Abraham  as  in  the  same 
class  with  Jehovah ;  Abraham  is  a  man,  Jehovah  is  a  god, 
and  a  man  is  not  a  god  nor  a  god  a  man,  nor  did  the  Hebrew 
thinker  ever  confuse  the  one  with  the  other.  If  for  the 
sake  of  completeness  he  carries  the  generations  of  Abra- 
ham back  to  Adam,  there  all  generation  stops,  for  Adam 
is  not  generated,  he  is  made.  The  abstraction  of  the  phe- 
nomenon of  sex  from  the  conception  of  God  by  the  Israelite 
has  put  man  and  God  into  worlds  as  distinct  as  the  world  of 
the  potter  and  the  world  of  the  pot. 

But  this  theory  has  never  been  satisfactory;  it  does  not 
account  for  facts.  The  pot  cannot  talk  back  to  the  potter, 
but  man  has  always  talked  back  to  God.  It  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  a  god  that  a  man  should  be  able  to  reason  with 
him.  The  great  thinkers  of  Israel  could  never  hew  straight 
to  the  line  of  their  theory;  they  constantly  veer  away  from 
the  thought  of  God  the  Creator  to  the  conception  of  God  the 
Father.  In  order  to  reconcile  these  two  theories,  they  affirm 
that  while  Israel  is  not  God's  son  by  generation,  he  is  God's 
son  by  adoption.  The  relation  between  man  and  God  is  not 
a  natural ;  it  is  a  legal  relation ;  it  is  a  matter  of  a  bargain 
and  sale;  it  is  a  chaffering  in  the  market,  a  contract  between 
parties  of  the  first  and  second  part. 

This  legal  relation  of  man  to  God  finds  naive  expression 
in  the  story  of  Jacob  at  Bethel,  g  Jacob,  having  cheated  his 
brother  Esau  out  of  his  birthright,  found  it  expedient  to  leave 
home  until  his  brother's  anger  had  time  to  cool.."  And  Jacob 
went  out  from  Beersheba  and  went  towards  Haran,  and  there 
were  no  Pullman  cars  in  those  days,  nor  hotels  by  the  way. 
And  Jacob  lighted  upon  a  certain  place  and  tarried  there  all 
night,  because  the  sun  was  set;  and  he  took  one  of  the  stones 
of  the  place  and  put  it  under  his  head  for  a  pillow  and  lay 
down  in  the  place  to  sleep. 

"And  he  dreamed,  and  behold  a  ladder  set  up  on  the  earth,... 
and  behold  the  angels  of  God  ascending  and  descending  upon 
it.  And,  behold,  the  Lord  stood  above  it  and  said:  'I  am  the 
Lord  God  of  Abraham  thy  father  and  the  God  of  Isaac;  the 


115 

land  whereon  thou  liest,  to  thee  will  I  give  it,  and  to  thy 
seed...'  And  Jacob  awaked  out  of  his  sleep...  And  he  was 
afraid,  and  said:  'How  dreadful  is  this  place!  this  is  none 
other  but  the  house  of  God,  and  this  is  the  gate  of  heaven....' 
And  Jacob  vowed  a  vow,  saying:  'If  God  will  be  with  me, 
and  will  keep  me  in  this  way  that  I  go,  and  will  give  me 
bread  to  eat,  and  raiment  to  put  on,  so  that  I  come  again  to  yj 
my  father's  house  in  peace,  then  shall  the  Lord  be  my  God.... 
And  of  all  that  thou  shalt  give  me  'Stii'ety  I  will  surely  give 
the  tenth  unto  thee.'  "  * 

In  this  classical  passage  we  have  set  forth  that  contrac- 
tual relation  between  man  and  God  which  has  so  powerfully 
influenced  the  religious  thought  of  the  Western  world.  Jacob 
makes  his  bargain  with  God ;  it  is  so  much  for  so  much,  and 
true  to  his  racial  instincts,  Jacob  gets  the  best  of  the  bargain. 
We  find  implied  in  the  contract  the  inveterate  belief  of  the 
ancient  world  that  the  existence  of  the  gods  is  dependent 
uporr  the  worship  of  man.  No  worshipper,  no  God !  Here  is 
a  god  without  a  worshipper.  Esau  has  already  forsaken  him  X 
and  gone  over  to  the  gods  of  his  wife,  who  was  of  the 
daughters  of  Heth.  Jehovah's  hope  for  future  existence  rests 
entirely  with  Jacob.  Jacob  takes  advantage  of  his  god's 
necessity  and  drives  a  hard  bargain.  If  God  will  take  care 
of  him,  he  will  take  care  of  God :  and  of  all  that  God  gives 
him  he  will  give  God  a  tenth. 

This  contract .  of  Jacob  with  Jehovah  has  given  to  the  re- 
ligion of  the  Hebrew  its  distinctive  place  in  the  religious  his- 
tory of  the  world.  Israel  were  the  people  of  the  covenant, 
and  Jehovah  was  the  God  of  the  covenant.  You  do  your  part, 
I  will  do  mine.  You  worship  me,  and  I  will  take  care 
of  you. 

This  Bargain  God  of  Jacob  is  not  nearly  so  noble  a  divinity 
as  the  God  of  the  House,  or  the  God  of  the  City.  The  House 
God  cared  for  the  house  because  he  loved  the  house,  the  City 
God  because  he  loved  the  city;  but  in  the  contract  between 

1  Genesis,  xxviii :    13-22. 


116  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Jehovah  and  Jacob  there  is  no  word  concerning  love,  it  is 
a  matter  of  business.  Jehovah  needs  a  worshipper  and  Jacob 
needs  a  god ;  they  meet  and  strike  their  bargain,  and  they 
both  live  up  to  it.  Jacob  worships  Jehovah,  and  Jehovah 
blesses  Jacob. 

This  contractual  conception  of  religion,  sordid  as  it  seems, 
has  been  the  pregnant,  moving  thought  of  the  most  successful 
religion  known  to  the  human  race.  It  rests  religion  not 
upon  necessity  but  upon  freedom.  I  may  not  choose  my 
father,  but  I  may  choose  my  god.  It  is  this  element  of  free- 
dom in  the  religion  of  the  Western  world  that  has  given  it 
its  expansive  power ;  the  gods  cannot  sit  down  and  take 
their  ease ;  they  are  not  hereditary  gods  holding  office  for 
eternity;  they  are  elective  gods  chosen  by  the  people  and 
rejected  by  the  people.  Unless  the  gods  meet  in  a  measure 
the  expectations  of  the  people  the  people  vote  them  out  of 
office  and  choose  new  gods  in  their  room. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  people  cannot  presume  on  the  favor 
of  the  gods  as  children  do  on  the  softness  of  the  parent.  The 
god  of  the  contract  is  not  to  be  trifled  with,  he  knows  and  you 
know  the  terms  of  the  covenant,  and  if  you  break  it,  that  is 
the  end  of  the  relation  between  you  and  your  god. 

The  terms  of  the  contract  being  made  by  mutual  consent 
may  be  changed  by  the  same  authority.  This  fact  gives  to 
a  religion  based  upon  covenant  a  progressive  element  that 
prevents  its  stagnation.  As  man  increases  in  wisdom  he 
can  make  new  and  greater  demands  upon  God ;  as  the  heart 
of  man  softens  and  enlarges,  God  can  ask  of  that  heart  a 
greater,  holier  worship. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  117 

CHAPTER   XXIV 
The  God  of  the  Working  Class 

According  to  its  legendary  history  the  Bene-Israel,  driven 
by  famine,  went  down  into  Egypt  and,  with  the  consent  of 
the  rulers,  settled  in  one  of  its  outlying  provinces. 

The  rapid  multiplication  of  this  people  and  their  solidarity 
made  them  a  constant  menace  to  the  integrity  of  the  kingdom  of 
the  Pharaohs. 

As  to-day  the  Russian  fears  the  active  mind  of  the  Jew,  so 
in  the  earlier  period,  according  to  the  story,  the  Egyptian 
Pharaohs  felt  uneasy  in  the  presence  of  the  same  prolific, 
intelligent,  and  acquisitive  race.  This  people  was  subjected 
to  persecution  then,  as  now ;  we  are  told  that  their  male  chil- 
dren were  killed  at  the  birth  by  order  of  the  king  and  the 
adult  male  population  was  employed  by  the  government  in 
the  brick-yards,  where  they  were  exposed  to  unwholesome 
conditions  and  to  destroying  hardships ;  being  whipped  and 
starved  by  their  task-masters. 

This  mode  of  treatment  did  not  arrest  the  increase  of  the 
people.  It  is  the  characteristic  of  Israel  that  the  more  you 
persecute  him  the  more  he  thrives.  The  only  effect  of  the 
policy  of  Egypt  was  to  inflame  the  anger  of  these  slaves 
against  their  masters,  intensify  their  tribal  consciousness, 
and  consolidate  their  tribal  organization.  The  real  and  ac- 
cepted rulers  of  Israel  at  that  time,  as  so  often  again  in 
their  history,  were  not  the  princes  of  Egypt,  but  the  Elders 
of  Israel.  The  tribes  seem  to  have  maintained  their  organ- 
ization intact  throughout  the  long  period  of  their  Egyptian 
bondage. 

As  a  consequence  of  their  oppression,  this  working  class 
in  Egypt  was  in  a  chronic  condition  of  unrest;  agitators 
moved  secretly  among  them,  stirring  their  minds  to  rebellion, 
recalling  to  them  the  days  of  their  freedom,  when  they  had 
fed  their  flocks  and  kept  their  herds  in  the  land  of  Syria. 
After  their  hard  day's  work  was  over,  they  gathered  in  their 
meeting-places  and  heard  from  the  lips  of  their  Elders  the 


118  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

story  of  that  land  which  was  theirs,  because  their  God  had 
promised  it  to  their  father  Abraham  and  to  his  seed  forever. 
Thus  this  downtrodden  people  were  fed  upon  the  hope  of 
deliverance,  and  their  spirits  were  kept  alive.  It  only  needed 
some  fresh  infliction,  some  fouler  insult,  some  bolder  leader- 
ship, to  set  this  mass  of  slaves  moving  away  from  their  cap- 
tivity out  into  freedom. 

These  necessary  conditions  of  successful  revolt  were  not 
long  in  coming.  The  killing  of  the  male  children  at  birth, 
the  increasing  arrogance  of  the  slave-masters,  prepared  the 
fuel  for  the  burning,  and  at  last  the  fire  was  kindled. 

According  to  their  legend,  one  of  their  number  had  been 
lifted  by  accident  out  of  his  slave  environment  and  incorpor- 
ated into  the  free,  ruling  class.  Educated  in  the  palace  of 
the  king,  this  born  slave  was  instructed  in  all  wisdom  of  the 
Egyptians ;  he  was  reckoned  as  the  son  of  Pharaoh's  daughter 
and  was  entitled  to  and  exercised  all  the  privileges  of  this 
princely  estate. 

At  this  time  the  religion  of  Egypt  was  highly  organized 
and  exceedingly  attractive.  The  worship  of  the  generative 
forces  of  nature,  incarnate  in  the  Sacred  Bull  Amon,  was  re- 
fined by  ritual  and  rationalized  by  doctrine.  Nature  worship 
was  practiced  in  the  adoration  of  Isis,  Osiris,  and  Horus,  in 
whose  history  we  have  the  eternal  story  of  birth,  marriage, 
and  death  told  in  hieroglyphic.  In  the  worship  of  the  Sun- 
god  Ra,  noble  aspirations  of  the  Egyptian  soul  found 
expression.  The  Egyptians  of  that  age  had  attained  to  a  cul- 
ture and  civilization  not  unlike  our  own ;  they  were  a  military 
power  of  the  first  rank,  engaged  extensively  in  commerce; 
their  cities  were  numerous  and  populous,  and  they  were  oc- 
cupied in  building  temples  and  tombs  which  have  ever  since 
been  the  wonders  of  the  world.  They  believed  in  a  future 
life,  conditioned  upon  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  and  mum- 
mified their  dead  that  the  body  might  be  ready  for  use  when 
the  tombs  were  opened  and  the  graves  gave  up  their  dead. 

If  we  may  believe  their  legends,  this  man  of  Israel,  of  the 
sub-tribe  of  Levi,  was  in  this  civilization,  but  not  of  it.  As 
he  grew  to  manhood  in  the  palace  of  the  Pharaohs  he  looked 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  119 

out  on  all  this  seething  life,  with  its  multiplicity  of  gods,  with 
its  swarming  priests,  with  its  proud  princes  and  oppressed 
people,  and  condemned  it  all  as  vain  and  unworthy.  His 
heart  was  not  in  this  life  of  splendor,  he  felt  within  that 
heart  the  call  of  his  blood.  Visiting  the  brick-yards,  his 
indignation  was  aroused  at  the  sight  of  the  cruelties  inflicted 
on  his  people,  and  seeing  an  Egyptian  beating  an  Israelite,  he 
killed  the  Egyptian  and  hid  his  corpse  in  the  sand.  Return- 
ing and  finding  two  of  the  Hebrew  slaves  quarreling,  he  re- 
buked them  with  the  noble  words : 

"Sirs,  ye  are  brethren.     Why  do  ye  wrong  one  another?" 

With  this  the  slaves  twitted  him  with  the  murder  of  the 
Egyptian,  upon  which,  fearing  for  his  life,  despairing  of  his 
people,  he  fled  the  land  of  Egypt,  went  over  into  the  region 
of  North  Arabia  and  became,  as  his  fathers  had  been  before 
him,  a  keeper  of  sheep. 

When  this  man  escaped  into  the  wilderness  he  became  a 
man  without  a  people  and  a  man  without  a  god.  The  gods 
of  Egypt  had  found  no  lodgment  in  his  life,  and  the  God  of 
Israel  was  a  dead  god,  forgotten  out  of  mind.  During  their 
long  sojourn  in  Egypt  the  Bene-Israel  had  neglected  the 
worship  of  their  War  God,  Jehovah ;  they  had  no  use  for  him 
because  of  the  unwarlike  character  of  their  lives.  They 
were  held  together  by  their  common  oppression  and  their 
Elders  repeated  to  them  from  generation  to  generation  the 
legends  of  their  fathers,  and  they  knew  their  God, — not  as 
their  god,  but  as  the  god  of  their  fathers,  the  God  of  Abraham, 
Isaac,  and  Jacob. 

Moses,  the  son  of  Amram  of  the  tribe  of  Levi,  knew  these 
legends  by  heart,  and  he  brooded  over  them  in  the  wilderness. 
As  the  heart  of  Moses  had  not  been  in  the  palace  of  Memphis, 
so  it  was  not  in  the  wilderness  of  Zin ;  it  was  all  the  time 
with  the  children  of  his  people,  bearing  their  griefs  and  shar- 
ing their  sorrows.  He  grew  from  a  young  man  into  an  old 
man,  but  he  never  forgot  the  iniquity  of  Egypt.  The  indig- 
nation of  his  heart  against  that  iniquity  was  as  hot  at  seventy 
as  it  was  at  thirty.  Then  his  heart  becomes  a  human  volcano 
in  which  are  pent-up  the  explosive  forces  of  religion.  The 


120        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Lord  God  of  his  fathers  meets  with  him;  the  old  name  Je- 
hovah, almost  forgotten,  is  revived  in  his  memory.  He  re- 
ceives command  from  that  God  to  go  down  into  Egypt  and 
lead  his  people  out  of  bondage  into  the  land  of  promise. 

Thus  did  the  God  Jehovah  declare  himself  to  be  the  God 
of  the  Working  Class,  and  thus  was  Moses  constituted  a  div- 
inely inspired  labor  leader.  This  labor  leadership  of  Moses 
is  not  to  be  compared  with  modern  labor  leadership,  from 
which  it  differs  not  in  degree  but  in  kind.  It  was  essentially 
religious  and  unselfish. 

His  first  mission  was  to  the  working  class  itself.  He  went 
into  the  brick-yards  and  preached  the  doctrine  of  divine  dis- 
content, he  stirred  the  hearts  of  these  laborers  with  a  burning 
sense  of  their  wrongs  and  inspired  them  with  a  hope  of  deliv- 
erance. No  labor  agitator  of  modern  times  can  compare  with 
Moses  in  the  effectiveness  of  his  propaganda.  He  recalled 
the  Israelites  to  their  ancient  religion,  he  made  them  choose 
between  Pharaoh  and  Jehovah,  he  fired  them  with  a  fanatical 
zeal,  he  made  their  tasks  hateful  to  them,  and  out  of  this 
erstwhile  mass  of  patient  laborers  raised  up  a  band  of  earnest 
war-men. 

And  when  he  was  called  before  Pharaoh  he  pitted  his  God 
against  all  the  gods  of  Egypt.  No  syndicalist,  no  direct  ac- 
tionist  of  modern  times,  is  in  the  same  class  with  Moses  in 
the  fierceness  of  his  sabotage.1  He  literally  kicked  Pha- 
raoh into  the  Red  Sea.  But  before  this  final  outrage  he  turned 
the  dust  of  Egypt  into  lice,  its  air  into  flies,  its  water  into 
blood ;  he  smote  its  young  and  old  with  boils,  he  killed  its 
cattle  with  the  murrain,  beat  down  its  growing  grain  with 
the  hail,  and  by  his  religious  magic  slew  all  the  first-born 
of  Egypt  in  a  night. 

This  labor  leader  was  uncompromising:  he  would  listen  to 
no  terms;  and  when  Pharaoh  said:  "The  people  can  go  but 
not  their  cattle,"  Moses  answered :  "Not  an  hoof  shall  be 
left  behind.". 

Leaving  Pharaoh,  this  man  went  down  to  the  brick  makers 
*Sabot,  a  wooden  shoe;  sabotage,  the  act  of  kicking  with  that  shoe. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  121 

and  led  them  out_pn  strike,  and  when  Pharaoh  followed  after, 
both  he  and  his  army  were  drowned  in  the  sea. 

Such  is  the  story  of  the  most  successful  labor  strike  in 
history.  It  ended  forever  the  bondage  of  Israel  to  Egypt  and 
made  of  these  slaves  a  free  and  aspiring  people.  The  salient 
fact  of  this  history  is  that  the  god  Jehovah  is  the  God  of  the 
Working  Class ;  he  espouses  their  cause  in  opposition  to  the 
ruling  leisure  class ;  he  has  no  regard  whatever  for  the  con- 
stitution of  the  kingdom  of  Egypt;  the  vested  rights  of  the 
Pharaohs  in  the  labor  of  his  people  is  to  him  a  vested  wrong, 
to  be  wiped  out  in  blood.  As  the  Egyptians  have  robbed  the 
Israelites,  so  in  turn,  by  the  command  of  Jehovah,  the  Israel- 
ites spoil  the  Egyptians. 

Having  chosen  the  working  class  for  his  people,  the  god 
Jehovah  has  remained  true  to  them  to  the  present  day.  As 
the  old  Greek  dynasty  was  the  dynasty  of  the  gods  of  the 
leisure  class,  so  this  Semitic  dynasty  founded  in  Jehovah  is 
the  dynasty  of  the  gods  of  the  working  class.  Jesus  and 
Joseph  as  well  as  Jehovah  are  born  of  the  working  class, 
are  the  advocates  of  the  working  class,  are  the  leaders  of  the 
working  class. 

The  trouble  with  the  labor  movement  in  the  modern  world 
is  that  it  is  without  spiritual  inspiration, — without  religious 
leadership.  It  has  no  god.  It  is  not  a  struggle  for  spiritual 
but  for  economic  betterment;  it  is  not  a  question  of  the  sover- 
eignty of  labor  but  of  the  wages  of  labor.  It  is  a  series  of 
small  compromises  secured  at  great  cost.  The  labor  leaders 
for  the  most  part  have  no  outlook;  they  have  not  had  the 
training  of  Moses  in  the  palace  nor  in  the  wilderness ;  they 
are  mere  opportunists,  men  of  their  day  drifting  with  their 
time.  They  do  not  know  that  their  gods  have  been  stolen 
from  them  and  are  used  against  them.  They  need  a  Moses 
who  will  stand  before  the  Pharaohs  of  the  world  in  the  name 
of  the  Lord  God  Jehovah,  and  claim  the  rights  of  labor  as 
inalienable,  divine  rights,  not  to  be  voided  by  time,  not  to 
be  hindered  by  vested  interests,  not  to  be  strangled  by  law, 
but  that  forever  a  man  shall  have  the  right  to  enjoy  to  the 
full  the  product  of  the  labor  of  his  brain  and  his  hand. 


122        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Fine  rhetoric!  we  may  say.  Yes,  it  is  fine  rhetoric;  but 
the  book  that  Christians  call  their  Bible  is  choke-full  of  such 
rhetoric;  and  unless  they  can  stomach  it  they  must  disgorge 
it  and  abjure  the  God  whom  they  worship  and  deny  the  Holy 
Name  by  which  they  are  called.  ' 

We  shall  see  later  that  the  Western  world  is  brought  face 
to  face  with  the  alternative  of  either  rejecting  its  gods  or 
revolutionizing  its  economic  system.  It  professes  to  believe 
in  the  Jehovah-Jesus,  God  of  the  Semitic  dynasty,  and  this  is 
the  God  of  the  Working  Class,  who  is  on  the  side  of  the 
poor  as  against  the  rich ;  on  the  side  of  the  weak  as  against 
the  strong;  on  the  side  of  the  oppressed  as  against  the  op- 
pres^or.  When  labor  hears  again  the  voice  of  its  God  and 
enters  upon  the  struggle  for  its  rights, — not  in  the  timorous, 
half-hearted  manner  of  the  past,  but  moving  en  masse/urged 
by  a  mighty  religious  impulse,  from  the  present  basis  of  prop- 
erty-right to  the  new  basis  of  human  right,  with  the  God 
of  the  Working  Class  in  the  forefront  of  the  army/-— then  old 
things  will  pass  away  and  all  things  will  become  new.  We 
are  in  the  midst  of  such  a  revolution  to-day,  and  one  of  its 
early  results  will  be  the  restoration  of  the  Jehovah-Jesus, 
God  of  the  Working  Class,  to  his  leadership  of  the  labor 
movement. 

This  conception  of  God  is  the  outcome  of  the  age-long 
struggle  of  the  working  class  against  the  social  arrangements 
that  have  kept  it  in  bondage.  When  the  working  class  is 
redeemed,  the  work  of  the  Jehovah-Jesus  God  will  have  been 
accomplished. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  123 

CHAPTER   XXV 

The  Tent   God  of  the  Bene-Israel 

That  the  religious  life  of  mankind  is  profoundly  modified 
by  changing  economic,  social,  and  political  condition  is  ex- 
emplified in  the  account  of  the  exodus  of  the  Bene-Israel  from 
Egypt,  their  journeys  in  the  Wilderness,  and  their  settle- 
ment in  Palestine.  It  is  not  necessary  that  we  accept  the 
details  of  that  story  as  historical ;  it  is  all  the  more  valuable 
because  it  is  legendary.  It  tells  of  a  tragic  effort  to  organize 
the  tribes  of  the  Bene-Israel  into  a  nation  and  to  give  them 
a  stable  form  of  government. 

After  crossing  the  Red  Sea  these  fugitives  were  in  all  the 
disorder  of  flight:  loosely  arranged  according  to  tribes,  but 
without  any  center  of  unity  or  principle  of  coherence.  The 
only  authority  to  which  the  people  as  a  whole  gave  heed  was 
that  of  Moses  their  leader.  This  man,  during  the  earlier 
period  of  the  migration,  was  sole  king  and  judge  in  Israel. 
What  little  government  there  was  Moses  administered;  not 
only  was  he  responsible  for  the  general  welfare,  he  was  also 
called  upon  to  settle  every  little  dispute  between  man 
and  man. 

After  a  weary  march  through  the  desert  Moses  would 
go  out  and  stand  in  the  midst  of  the  camp,  and  all  the  people 
would  come  to  him  to  settle  their  quarrels.  It  was  impossible 
that  one  man  could  do  justice  to  himself  and  to  the  people 
under  such  a  strain.  This  one-man  government  was  absurd 
and  futile,  and  it  only  needed  some  disinterested  person  to 
come  that  way  and  point  out  this  absurdity  and  futility,  to 
bring  it  to  an  end. 

Fortunately  for  all  concerned,  Jethro,  Moses'  father-in-law, 
came  from  Midian  to  visit  his  now  famous  son-in-law.  He 
had  at  first  very  little  pleasure  from  his  visit,  for  Moses  was 
so  busy  all  day  long  and  far  into  the  night  that  he  had  no 
time  to  sit  down  in  the  tent  door  and  talk  over  old  times. 

One  evening,  when  Moses  had  been  gone  all  day,  he  came 
to  his  tent  and  lay  down  on  the  ground  from  utter  exhaustion. 
Jethro  looked  at  him  and  asked : 


124        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

"Moses,  what  have  you  been  doing  all  day?" 

And  Moses  answered : 

"I  have  been  judging  the  people." 

"And  how  do  you  judge  the  people?" 

"I  go  out  and  stand  in  the  midst  of  the  camp,  and  all  the 
people  come  to  me  for  judgment." 

"What,— all  the  people?" 

"Yes;  all  the  people." 

"With  every  little  thing?" 

"Yes,  with  every  little  thing." 

"But  why  do  you  try  to  do  all  this?" 

"Because  I  am  the  only  man  in  the  camp  that  can  do  it." 

"Excuse  me,  Moses,"  said  Jethro,  "but  you  are  the  only 
man  in  the  camp  who  cannot  do  it.  You  are  a  great  prophet 
and  a  great  leader.  Upon  you  rests  the  safety  of  all  this 
people.  If  you  wear  yourself  out  as  you  are  doing,  you  will 
break  down,  and  the  people,  without  leadership,  will  be  lost 
in  the  Wilderness.  What  you  need  is  organization.  Appoint 
captains  over  tens  and  captains  over  fifties  and  captains  over 
hundreds  and  captains  over  thousands,  and  let  these  captains 
judge  all  the  minor  matters,  while  you  reserve  to  yourself 
the  decision  of  the  important  questions  that  concern  the  well- 
being  of  the  whole  congregation." 

Moses  sat  up  and  said : 

"Jethro,  you  are  right.     I  will  do  it." 

And  he  did ;  which  shows  that  even  a  prophet  of  God  can 
learn  wisdom  from  a  simple  man.  Moses  had  been  trying 
not  only  to  act  for  Jehovah  but  also  to  usurp  the  functions 
of  the  Elders  of  Israel.  His  mode  of  personal  government 
had  no  warrant  in  the  past  history  of  the  people.  In  modern 
phrase:  "it  was  unconstitutional." 

From  the  beginning  each  sub-tribe  of  the  Bene-Israel  had 
been  ruled  by  the  Elders  of  that  tribe,  the  only  principle  of 
unification  recognized  by  all  the  sub-tribes  was  the  tribal  god. 
Jehovah,  who  was  both  judge  and  king  in  Israel.  From  the 
earliest  period  the  Bene-Israel  had  lived  under  a  loose  theoc- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  125 

racy  and  followed  such  leaders  as  were  from  time  to  time 
commissioned  by  Jehovah  to  meet  a  special  occasion.  It 
was  this  theocratic  form  of  government  that  Moses  reestab- 
lished in  the  Wilderness,  giving  to  it  a  new  spirit  and  a  new 
symbol. 

The  people  of  Israel  were  arranged  according  to  their  tribes; 
the  settlement  of  all  disputes  within  the  tribes  were  com- 
mitted to  the  Elders  of  that  tribe.  These  men  resumed  once 
more  their  constitutional  function  of  judgment, — Moses  acting 
as  a  court  of  appeal  in  greater  matters.  A*nd  from  this  time 
Moses  sedulously  refused  to  be  anything  more  than  the 
spokesman  of  Jehovah.  The  God  of  the  tribe  was  the  king 
of  the  tribe.  This  god  was  no  longer  far  away  in  the  moun- 
tain, his  presence  was  with  his  people ;  wherever  they  went 
he  went ;  when  they  marched  he  marched ;  when  they  camped 
he  camped. 

The  tent  of  Jehovah  was  in  the  midst  of  the  tents  of  Israel. 
The  tribe  of  Levi  was  taken  to  be  the  body-guard  of  the  great 
king.  The  tribe  of  Joseph  became  the  two  tribes  of  ManassHi 
and  Ephraim.  The  twelve  tribes  in  marching  and  in  camping 
were  in  a  hollow  square :  three  tribes  to  the  North,  three  tribes 
to  the  South,  three  tribes  to  the  East,  and  three  tribes  to  the 
West,  and  in  the  midst  of  that  square  was  the  tent  of  Jehovah, 
guarded  day  and  night  by  the  men  of  Levi.  And  all  the 
movements  of  the  people  were  regulated  by  this  divine  pres- 
ence. When  the  tent  of  Jehovah  was  taken  down  the  people 
took  up  their  journey;  when  the  tent  was  set-up  the  people 
rested.  Not  in  all  the  religious  history  of  the  world  is  there 
a  more  significant  symbol  than  this  tent  of  the  God  of  Israel 
in  the  midst  of  the  tents  of  Israel.  There  was  no  image  in  that 
tent,  only  a  light  burning;  it  was  the  invisible,  inaudible  spirit 
of  Israel,  the  soul  of  the  people,  that  was  symbolized  by  the 
tent.  Israel  was  not  unified  in  anything,  it  was  unified  in 
itself.  The  people  pressed  upon  the  people  and  became  one 
in  their  union  with  their  tribal  God  whom  they  had  chosen 
as  their  king. 

This  principle  of  government  is  universal :  true  government 
is  not  external  to  a  people ;  it  cannot  be  made  out  of  hand ; 


126  THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

it  is  a  growth.  Each  people  grows  its  own  government  as 
each  body  grows  its  own  skeleton.  Government  is  the 
product  of  the  soul  of  a  people  :  as  a  people  think  so  are 
they  ruled.  With  changing  thoughts  come  changing  forms. 
We  see  various  kinds  of  governments  in  the  wprld  to-day, 
each  expressing  the  spirit  of  its  people  ;  some  are  crustacean 
(such  as  the  Empire  of  Russia  and  the  Republic  of  the  United 
States),  and  grow  their  bones  on  the  outside,  and  some  are 
vertebrates  (like  the  English)  and  grow  their  skeletons  on  the 
inside.  Every  government  is  expressive  of  the  soul  of  the 
people  in  its  present  stage  of  advancement.  Violent  changes 
are  never  lasting. 

"My  Lords  and  Gentlemen,"  said  Chief  Justice  Hale  to  the 
Lords  and  Commons  of  England,  when,  after  the  death  of 
Cromwell,  there  was  talk  of  bringing  back  the  king,  —  "my 
Lords  and  Gentlemen,  the  laws  of  England  have  always  run 
in  the  name  of  the  King,  Lords,  and  Commons,  and  that  the 
laws  of  England  may  be  the  more  easily  administered  I  give 
my  voice  to  the  bringing  back  the  king." 

And  they  brought  back  the  king,  —  even  so  sorry  a  king  as 
Charles  II  of  unsavory  memory,  —  because  the  soul  of  England 
had  made  the  king  essential.  And  it  is  so  even  to  this  day  : 
England  is  unified  in  the  crown  as  Israel  was  unified  in 
the  tent. 

The  tent  of  Jehovah  in  the  midst  of  the  tents  of  Israel 
made  so  profound  an  impression  on  the  imagination  of  Israel, 
—  and  through  Israel  upon  the  religious  imagination  of  the 
Western  world,  —  that  it  has  always  been  used  as  the  symbol 
of  the  presence  of  God  in  the  midst  of  his  people.  When 
One  came  of  whom  men  said:  "He  is  God  in  the  flesh,  God 
in  the  midst  of  His  people,"  they  'harked  back  to  the  Wilder- 
ness and  said  of  Him  words  that  will  never  die: 

Kou  d  Xoyoa  crap£  s'ylveTO  xal  ejxiq 


In  this  manner  the  tented  Jehovah  led  his  people  through 

the  wilderness  and  gave  them  the  land  of  their  fathers.     With 

1  And  the  word  was  made  flesh  and  was  tented  among  us.  —  John  1:14. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  127 

their  settlement  in  that  land,  they  changed  their  mode  of  life; 
they  were  no  longer  shepherds  and  herdsmen,  wandering  from 
place  to  place,  they  were  farmers  dwelling  each  man  under 
his  own  vine  and  fig  tree.  The  people  no  longer  lived  in  tents, 
they  built  themselves  houses.  But  while  the  people  lived  in 
houses  Jehovah  still  dwelt  in  his  tent  which  was  pitched  in 
Shiloh.  The  conservatism  of  the  God  did  not  keep  pace  with 
the  advance  of  the  people, — it  never  does.  When  every 
institution  is  changing,  religion  is  the  last  to  change. 

It  was,  however,  discovered  in  time  that  the  old  theocratic 

^-" 

government  was  not  adequate  to  the  new  conditions.  The 
people  of  Israel,  in  dealing  with  the  settled  governments 
about  them,  could  no  longer  trust  to  the  sporadic  leadership 
of  men  raised  up  for  the  occasion,  so  they  demanded  a  king 
who  could  go  out  before  them  to  battle.  After  a  bitter  resist- 
ance and  warning,  the  prophet  Samuel,  who  represented  the 
old  order,  gave  them  their  king, — first  Saul  and  then  David ; 
but  the  King  did  not  reign  in  his  own  right;  he  was  the  vicar 
of  Jehovah,  who  was  still  and  must  always  be  king  in  Israel. 
Both  king  and  people  held  tenaciously  to  the  theocratic  con- 
ception of  government.  Saul  was  overthrown  because  he 
displeased  Jehovah,  whereupon  David  was  chosen  as  a  man 
after  Jehovah's  own  heart. 

When  David  took  the  stronghold  of  the  Jebusites  on  Mount 
Zion  and  called  the  name  of  it  Jerusalem  and  made  it  the 
seat  of  his  government,  he,  toward  the  end  of  his  career, 
reproached  himself  with  the  thought  that  while  he  dwelt  in  a 
house  of  cedar,  Jehovah  still  lived  in  a  tent,  and  he  was 
minded  to  wipe  out  this  disgrace  and  build  a  house  for  Je- 
hovah in  Jerusalem.  At  first  the  God  refused  to  change  his 
manner  of  life ;  but,  after  persuasion,  consented,  and  David 
made  preparation  for  the  building  of  a  house  for  Jehovah, — a 
house  that  Solomon  completed  and  dedicated ;  and  from  that 
time  Jehovah  made  his  home  in  Jerusalem. 

This  change  of  residence  from  the  tent  to  the  house  was 
significant  of  past  economic,  social,  and  political  changes 
and  of  such  changes  to  come.  The  people  of  Israel  had 
radically  altered  their  mode  of  life:  they  were  agricultural  and 


128        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

not  pastoral.  A  passion  for  their  land  had  in  a  measure 
taken  the  place  of  a  passion  for  their  people.  Jehovah  be- 
came the  God  of  the  Land  more  than  the  God  of  the  People. 
In  that  land  he  ruled,  in  that  land  he  must  live.  When  once 
his  house  was  built  in  Jerusalem,  then  that  became  his  per- 
manent place  of  residence,  All  of  the  gods  of  the  ancient 
world  were  confined  to  their  cities;  no  god  ever  went  abroad 
to  visit  for  any  length  of  time ;  for  he  was  the  god  of  his  city, 
and  if  he  left  his  city,  he  lost  his  divinity. 

In  the  case  of  Jehovah,  this  identification  of  the  God  with 
the  city  was  absolute ;  it  was  disastrous,  as  we  shall  see, 
to  the  unity  of  Israel,  but  it  was  of  advantage  to  the  religion 
of  Israel  as  a  whole.  What  the  tent  had  been  the  city  be- 
came; it  was  the  center  of  unity,  the  principle  of  coherence. 
The  tribes  that  severed  their  connection  with  the  holy  city 
were  lost;  the  tribe  of  which  that  city  was  the  center  was 
saved. 


Jehovah  The  Righteous 

It  is  the  weakness  of  the  theocratic  form  of  government, 
whether  in  church  or  state,  that  the  divine  sovereign  can 
never  reign  in  person.  He  must  always  rule  through  a  vicar, 
and,  whether  this  vicar  be  king  or  pope,  he  is,  too  frequently, 
apt  to  be  but  a  sorry  representative  of  his  celestial  Lord. 
Men  of  godlike  mould  are  few  and  far  between.  They  are 
seldom  or  never  born  in  the  purple,  nor  do  they  easily  ac- 
quire office  in  the  existing  order.  Princes,  whether  of  church 
or  state,  are  often  commonplace,  of  mediocre  ability,  and 
lacking  initiative.  Great  leaders  of  the  people, —  men  of  divine 
stature  like  Jesus  and  Lincoln, — are  more  frequently  found 
in  the  ranks  of  the  people.  The  greatness  of  humanity  is  in 
the  mass,  seldom  in  the  class. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  129 

The  theocracy  established  by  Moses  was  no  exception  to 
this  rule.  As  long  as  Moses  lived,  Israel  might  well  be- 
lieve that  it  was  under  the  direct  government  of  its  God ; 
for  Moses  in  the  intensity  of  his  will,  in  the  clearness  of  his 
intelligence,  in  the  justice  of  his  rule,  was  all  that  might  be 
expected  of  a  god.  He  did  his  best,  and  a  god  can  do  no 
better. 

After  the  death  of  Moses,  Joshua  carried  on  the  tra- 
ditions of  his  administration.  Joshua  was  an  heroic 
leader  of  the  people, — sagacious  and  successful  in  war,  wise 
and  just  in  peace.  When  he  had  subdued  the  Canaanites 
and  other  hill  tribes  of  Palestine  and  appropriated  their  lands, 
he  divided  those  lands  equitably  among  the  people,  man  by 
man  and  family  by  family,  taking  for  himself  only  his  por- 
tion,— no  less  and  no  more  than  was  allotted  to  the  humblest 
man  of  Israel.  After  the  death  of  Joshua  the  people  of 
Israel,  being  without  leadership,  were  the  easy  prey  of  the 
Philistines  and  the  Sidonians,  from  whom  they  were  from 
time  to  time  delivered  by  such  heroes  as  Gideon  and  Jephtha, 
— men  who  might  well  be  looked  upon  as  representatives  of 
the  power  of  Jehovah. 

With  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom,  all  this  was 
changed.  The  anointed  of  Jehovah  might  be  any  weakling' 
born  in  the  palace.  The  first  three  kings  had  a  certain  meas- 
ure of  greatness  which  might  entitle  them  to  be  considered 
the  visible  representatives  of  the  invisible  king.  Saul,  in 
physical  proportions,  in  religious  enthusiasm,  in  generosity  of 
soul,  was  a  man  not  wholly  unworthy  to  sit  in  the  seat  of 
judgment  and  rule  in  the  name  of  Jehovah.  But  he  was 
lacking  in  firmness  of  will.  He  would  and  he  wouldn't; 
he  allowed  Samuel  to  browbeat  him  and  David  to  outwit 
him.  These  defects  were  fatal  to  his  rule.  A  god  must 
never  be  a  weakling  and  he  must  never  be  a  fool ;  and  what  a 
god  must  not  be,  his  vicar  cannot  be ;  and,  as  Saul  was  both 
weak  of  will  and  feeble  of  understanding,  he  was  rejected 
by  Jehovah. 

David,   who   succeeded   him,   was   chosen   by  Jehovah   for 
those  qualities  of  mind  and  heart  which   mark  the  natural 


130  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

leader:  unflinching  purpose  that  knows  when  to  kill  and  when 
not  to  kill ;  ability  to  seize  every  opportunity  and  make  the 
most  of  it ;  the  faculty  of  making  and  using  friends ;  a  relig- 
iosity that  approves  itself  to  the  crowd,  and  withal  a  genius 
that  embodies  and  expresses  the  soul  of  a  people.  It  is  not 
without  cause  that  David  is  one  of  the  heroes  of  humanity 
who  are  chosen  of  the  gods  to  do  their  work  in  the  world. 

In  his  private  life  David  was  an  Oriental ;  he  despised 
women  and  used  them  for  his  pleasure ;  the  only  one  he  ever 
loved  was  the  wife  of  Uriah  the  Hitite.  And  it  was  just 
this  one  love  that  Jehovah  condemned,  being  as  it  was  a  viola- 
tion of  the  property  right  of  Uriah  in  the  person  of  his  wife. 
The  reign  of  David  was  the  golden  age  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Israel,  and  the  best  that  Jehovah  could  promise  after  that 
reign  was  that  a  son  of  David  should  sit  upon  his  throne 
forever. 

Solomon,  the  son  and  successor  of  David,  was  a  love 
child, — the  son  of  Bathsheba,  an  adulteress ;  but  that  did  not 
prevent  Jehovah  from  giving  him  a  wisdom  that  has  immor- 
talized him  in  all  the  lands  of  the  East.  To  him  are  ascribed 
all  the  wise  sayings  of  all  the  wise  men  for  generations  before 
and  after  him.  He  was  a  naturalist,  a  philosopher,  and  a 
poet.  He  has  the  credit  of  writing  the  one  love  story  in  the 
Bible  and  of  producing  the  greatest  essay  of  pessimistic  phil- 
osophy ever  given  to  the  world.  We  need  not  believe  that 
the  Song  of  Solomon  or  Koheleth  are  the  work  of  Solomon ; 
we  only  need  believe  that  men  thought  them  his  work  and  in 
keeping  with  his  character. 

In  his  private  life  Solomon  was  an  Oriental  despot, — with 
his  harem  of  three  hundred  wives  and  a  thousand  concubines. 
The  expenses  of  his  court  were  a  great  burden  upon  the 
people,  and  the  temple  that  he  built  in  Jerusalem  absorbed 
the  wealth  of  the  nation. 

Before  Solomon  died,  the  northern  tribes  were  in  a  state 
of  revolt.  The  removal  of  the  Ark  of  Jehovah  to  Jerusalem ; 
the  exaltation  of  the  tribe  of  Judah  as  the  custodians  of  the 
Ark  above  the  other  tribes ;  the  subjection  of  the  priests  and 
the  Levites  to  the  king,  together  with  the  exactions  of  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        131 

tax-gatherers  and  the  insolence  of  the  officials,  kept  the  whole 
of  the  north  country  in  a  state  of  chronic  discontent.  The 
contemptuous  rejection  by  Rehoboam,  the  son  of  Solomon, 
of  the  petition  for  reform,  caused  Jeroboam,  the  son  of  Nebat, 
to  raise  the  standard  of  revolt,  to  cry :  "To  your  tents,  O 
Israel !"  and  make  of  revolt  revolution.  The  ten  tribes 
seceded,  and  only  the  tribe  of  Judah  and  the  little  tribe  of 
Benjamin  were  left  to  the  House  of  David. 

For  a  time  the  tribal  God  Jehovah  was  claimed  by  each  of 
the  rival  factions.  But  unity  of  worship  was  lost  with  unity 
of  tribal  life.  In  spite  of  the  denunciation  of  such  men  as 
Elijah  and  Elisha,  the  northern  tribes  gradually  drifted  away 
from  their  loyalty  to  Jehovah  and  adopted  the  gods  of  the 
surrounding  people,  being  finally  swept  into  captivity  by  the 
Chaldeans,  thus  losing  their  tribal  identity. 

The  effect  of  all  this  upon  the  fortunes  of  Jehovah  is  man- 
ifest. He  had  ceased  to  be  the  God  of  Israel  and  had  become 
the  God  of  the  Jew.  The  little  tribe  of  Benjamin  was  merged 
with  the  greater  tribe,  and  only  Judah  was  left  of  all  the  tribes 
of  Israel  to  keep  alive  the  worship  of  Jehovah.  Never  was 
a  god  in  greater  danger  of  extinction.  That  the  cult  of 
Jehovah  survived  this  disaster  and  in  due  time  absorbed  all 
the  cults  of  the  Western  world, — so  that  Jehovah  is  to-day 
the  chief  God  of  the  reigning  religious  dynasty, — is  owing  to 
a  concatenation  of  circumstances  so  wonderful  that  it  is  not 
strange  that  men  have  ascribed  the  glory  of  Jehovah  to  the 
power  of  Jehovah. 

The  first  of  these  circumstances  in  importance  is  the  evolu- 
tion of  Jehovah  from  the  Tribe-God  of  the  Bene-Israel  into 
the  God  of  the  Moral  Order.  This  evolutionary  process  was 
largely  the  work  of  a  single  great  thinker,  one  of  the  greatest 
that  the  human  race  has  produced,  Isaiah,  the  son  of  Amoz, 
who  found  Jehovah  the  Tribe-God  of  Israel  and  left  him  for 
all  time  the  God  of  the  Moral  Order  of  Humanity. 

This  poet  and  statesman,  Isaiah,  lived  in  the  middle  of  the 
Eighth  Century  before  our  era.  He  was,  according  to  tradi- 
tions, of  royal  blood,  closely  related  to  the  throne.  When 
he  entered  upon  active  life,  the  king  in  Jerusalem  was  Uz- 


132        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

ziah, — a  prince  who  had  raised  his  little  kingdom  to  an  im- 
portance that  it  had  not  known  since  the  days  of  David.  In 
the  midst  of  his  successful  career  Uzziah  was  smitten  with 
leprosy  and  had  to  retire  to  the  lazar  house.  He  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Jotham,  his  son,  who,  during  his  reign  of  sixteen 
years,  continued  the  tradition  and,  in  a  measure,  the  successes 
of  his  father. 

Then  followed  the  wicked  reign  of  Ahaz  and  the  weak 
reign  of  Hezekiah.  During  all  this  time  the  most  important 
personage  in  Jerusalem  was  Isaiah, — a  prophet  who,  by  his 
genius,  wrought  a  lasting  revolution  in  religious  thought, 
giving  to  God  a  new  character  and  a  new  mission. 

The  times  were  perilous.  The  two  civilizations  of  the 
Nile  and  the  Euphrates  were  struggling  for  the  mastery. 
The  little  Kingdom  of  Judah  lay  between  these  contending 
powers;  its  existence  was  at  the  mercy  of  Babylon  and  Egypt; 
its  politicians  were  trying  to  play  off  each  of  these  powers 
against  the  other.  There  was  an  Egyptian  and  a  Babylonian 
party  in  the  city  of  Jerusalem.  The  city  itself  was  the  prey 
of  wicked  and  weak  kings,  of  idle  and  licentious  princes,  of 
corrupt  judges  and  of  grafting  politicians.  With  the  storm- 
cloud  of  Babylonian  invasion  darkening  the  East,  the  women 
of  the  city  were  walking  the  streets  adorned  with  rings  and 
anklets,  with  bosoms  exposed  and  mincing  as  they  walked. 
Society  was  in  process  of  dissolution;  from  the  crown  of  the 
head  to  the  sole  of  the  foot  there  was  no  soundness  in  it. 
Upon  this  scene  of  disgrace  and  danger  Isaiah  entered,  and 
so  wrought  in  it  that  out  of  that  chaos  emerged  a  new  order 
for  mankind. 

Isaiah  was  a  religious  genius.  Jehovah  the  God  of  Israel 
was  to  him  the  great  reality;  the  people  of  Judah  were  the 
people  of  Jehovah,  and  the  city  of  Jerusalem  the  city  of 
Jehovah.  But  the  Jehovah  of  Isaiah  was  not  the  old  War 
God  of  the  Bene-Israel.  He  was  not  primarily  the  Tent 
God  of  Moses  or  the  City  God  of  David.  Isaiah  saw  in 
Jehovah  the  God  of  the  Social  Order.  He  gave  him  a  new 
name,  a  name  which,  however  perverted,  has  ever  since  been 
the  name  of  the  God  whom  the  Western  world  has  professed 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  133 

to  worship.  This  new  name  in  the  Hebrew  is  Zadek, — Je- 
hovah Zadek,  which  in  English  is  Jehovah  The  Righteous. 
Isaiah  ascribed  all  the  evils  in  Jerusalem  to  the  forsaking 
on  the  part  of  the  people  of  the  worship  of  Jehovah-Zadek. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  give  to  the  modern  legalized  mind 
any  conception  of  what  Isaiah  meant  by  Zadek.  We  trans- 
late it  Righteousness,  and  we  confound  righteousness  with 
legality.  We  say  what  is  lawful  is  right,  whereas  the  very 
opposite  is  true.  Ever  since  laws  have  been  made  it  can  be 
asserted  as  a  general  principle  that  what  is  lawful  is  wrong. 
Throughout  the  greater  period  of  human  history  in  the  West- 
ern world  human  slavery  has  been  lawful,  but  never  for  one 
single  moment  has  human  slavery  been  right.  \  In  England 
to-day, — in  all  Europe  and  in  America, — land  monopoly  is 
lawful,  but  never  for  one  moment  has  land  monopoly  been 
right.  As  I  write  these  words  the  Mexican  peons  are  waging 
what,  I  trust,  is  successful  warfare,  against  the  damnable 
wrong  of  land  monopoly.  Ever  since  the  evolution  of  the 
Aryan  family  the  law  has  denied  to  woman  personal  and 
political  rights,  and  this  denial  is  a  wrong  against  which 
the  women  are  rightly  rebelling.  All  through  history  the 
weaker  elements  of  society  have  been  exploited  by  the 
stronger  and  the  greatest  means  of  exploitation  has  always 
been  the  law.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the  most 
powerful  agents  of  unrighteousness  have  been  the  courts  of 
law.  Such  courts  condemned  Jesus  to  death  and  sent  Dred 
Scott  back  into  slavery. 

Jehovah  The  Righteous  condemns  legality  in  the  name  of 
righteousness.  He  is  the  God  of  the  Working  Class,  the  God 
of  the  Slave,  the  God  of  the  Poor,  the  God  of  the  Widow,  the 
God  of  the  Fatherless. 

Isaiah,  the  prophet  of  Jehovah  The  Righteous,  asserts  that 
society  exists  to  defend  the  rights  of  the  weak  against  the 
aggressions  of  the  strong,  the  liberties  of  man  against  the 
usurpations  of  property.  Jehovah  The  Righteous  condemns 
the  principle  upon  which  civilizations  rest.  No  man  has  any 
right  to  say  that  aught  he  possesses  is  his  own.  If  he  be 
faithful  to  God  he  must  hold  all  that  he  has  in  trust  for 


134  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

the  community.  Both  in  earning  and  in  spending,  the  wel- 
fare of  society  is  first,  the  welfare  of  the  individual  second. 
So  long  as  there  is  an  ignorant  man,  an  overworked  woman, 
a  hungry  child  in  the  city,  so  long  is  Jehovah  The  Righteous 
angry  and  Jerusalem  without  peace. 

Isaiah  made  the  worship  of  Jehovah  The  Righteous  to 
consist  in  doing  righteousness.  He  had  no  patience  with  the 
ritual  of  the  temple,  with  the  new  moons  and  the  sabbaths. 
All  this  was  to  him  so  much  blasphemy  of  Jehovah  The 
Righteous,  who  cries  in  immortal  language : 

"To  what  purpose  is  the  multitude  of  your  sacrifices  unto 
me.  saith  the  Lord.  I  am  full  of  the  burnt  offerings  of 
rams  and  the  fat  of  fed  beasts,  and  I  delight  not  in  the  blood 
of  bullocks,  or  of  lambs,  or  of  he-goats.  When  ye  come  to 
appear  before  me  who  hath  required  this  at  your  hands  to 
trample  my  courts.  Bring  no  more  vain  oblations;  incense 
is  an  abomination  unto  me  .  .  .  Your  new  moons  and  your 
appointed  feasts  my  soul  hateth  .  .  .  Wash  you ;  make  you 
clean,  seek  judgment,  relieve  the  oppressed,  judge  the  father- 
less, plead  for  the  widow." 

Of  all  the  gods  whom  men  have  worshipped  none  is  greater, 
none  can  be  greater,  than  Jehovah  The  Righteous,  the  God 
of  Isaiah, — the  God  of  the  Social  Order. 


CHAPTER   XXVII 
The  God  of  The  Temple :  Jehovah  the  Holy 

His  removal  to  Jerusalem  and  his  long  residence  in  the 
temple  brought  about  a  decided  change  in  the  character  and 
habits  of  Jehovah.  He  became  more  and  more  the  God. .of 
the  temple  and  less  and  less  the  God  of  the  people.  In  the 
majestic  presence  in  the  temple  we  hardly  recognized  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  135 

homely  God,  who,  without  ceremony  or  state,  came  and  sat 
in  the  door  of  Abraham's  tent.  This  god,  in  becoming  a 
sovereign,  has  ceased  to  be  a  friend.  Nor  do  we  see  in  him 
anything  of  that  ruggedness  that  was  his  habit  in  the  wilder- 
ness, when,  after  a  hard  day's  march,  he  slept  on  the  ground ; 
nor  does  he  shock  us  with  that  fierceness  with  which  he 
pursued  the  Canaanites  until  the  going  down  of  the  sun. 

City  life  has  refined  the  god  and  given  him  a  new  name. 
Men  speak  of  him  now  with  bated  breath,  not  as  Jehovah 
of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob ;  but  as  Jehovah  Kodesh,  Je- 
hovah the  Separate,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel.  Under  this 
name  God  is  beginning  to  have  an  existence  of  his  own,  apart 
from  the  life  of  his  people.  Even  though  Israel  perish,  the 
Holy  One  endures. 

The  Sons  of  Levi  are  the  caretakers  of  his  temple,  but 
they  are  no  longer  the  guardians  of  his  person.  He  has 
mightier  servitors  to  wait  upon  him  in  his  new  estate.  "Cher- 
ubim and  Seraphim  veil  their  faces  before  him  and  cry :  Holy, 
Holy,  Holy !  (Kodesh,  Kodesh,  Kodesh  !)  Heaven  and  earth 
are  full  of  thy  glory.  Glory  be  to  Thee,  Jehovah  Most 
High." 

In  this  exaltation  of  Jehovah  we  see  the  effect  of  surround- 
ing and  sophisticated  civilizations  upon  the  simplicity  of  Is- 
rael. In  former  days  when  Abraham  met  with  God  and  God 
called  him  and  said :  "Abraham,"  Abraham  answered  him 
and  said :  "Here  am  I."  Here  we  have  a  simplicity  and 
directness  that  is  lost  in  the  later  era — God  is  no  longer  a 
shepherd  meeting  a  shepherd;  He  is  a  mighty  potentate,  a 
celestial  Pharaoh,  or  a  Tiglath-pileser,  sitting  enthroned  in 
the  midst  of  his  courtiers,  unfamiliar  and  unapproachable. 
Isaiah  does  not  meet  Jehovah  as  Abraham  did  in  the  tent 
door,  nor  even  as  Elijah  did  in  the  cave  of  Horeb,  but  in 
the  sacred  temple,  with  the  lights  burning  before  the  altar, 
in  the  hush  of  the  priests  murmuring  their  inaudible  prayers. 
In  that  darkness  Isaiah  sees  the  throne  of  Jehovah  high  and 
lifted  up,  in  that  silence  he  hears  the  seraphic  anthem  and 
the  call  of  his  God. 

This  notion  of  holiness  is  not  peculiar  to  the  religion  of 


136  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Israel.  It  is  an  element  natural  to  all  religion.  It  has  its 
origin  in  a  fear  that  men  have  of  the  unknown  and  the  dan- 
gerous. It  is  only  an  elaboration  and  refinement  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  taboo,  or  negative  magic,  by  which  primitive  man 
sought  to  protect  kings  and  gods  from  profanation,  and  to 
hedge  himself  away  from  a  too  great  nearness  to  royalty  and 
divinity,  which  was  dangerous  to  his  peace  and  safety.  Those 
men  are  safest  upon  whom  gods  and  kings  do  not  look.  If 
kings  and  gods  could  come  and  go  among  the  people  as  beasts 
and  hinds  do,  without  restriction  or  ceremony,  then  that 
familiarity  that  breeds  contempt  would  lead  the  people  to 
despise  the  god  or  king  who  made  himself  so  common.  To 
avert  this  danger,  men  set  apart  places  as  sacred  to  their 
gods ;  kings  surrounded  themselves  with  ceremony,  wore 
robes  of  state,  and  moved  in  an  atmosphere  of  etiquette. 
Neither  a  king  nor  a  god  can  safely  engage  in  any  of  the 
common  tasks  of  life:  a  king  may  not  cut  wood  nor  draw 
water;  a  god  must  not  be  a  carpenter  nor  a  bricklayer. 

Holiness  did  not,  in  the  primitive  religions,  necessarily 
include  what  we  call  purity.  The  temple  prostitutes,  both 
male  and  female,  are  called  in  Hebrew  Kodesh  and  Kodesha. 
It  is  true  that  from  the  beginning  the  use  of  the  temple  for 
impure  rites  was  an  abomination  to  the  Hebrew.  This  was 
owing  to  the  fact  that  Jehovah  was  aloof  from  all  that  per- 
tained to  sex,  and  because  of  this  aloofness,  the  Hebrew  con- 
ception of  holiness  came  to  include  chastity  as  an  essential 
quality.  In  Christianity  this  quality  was  supreme,  so  that 
a  holy  man  or  holy  woman  was  a  man  or  woman  who  had 
made  and  kept  a  vow  of  perpetual  chastity.  But  in  itself 
holiness  is  simply  separation, — dedication  to  a  special  use. 
Priests  are  holy  not  in  and  of  themselves,  but  by  reason  of 
their  consecration.  Places  are  holy  not  because  they  are 
different  from  other  places,  but  because  they  have  been  set 
apart  by  the  thoughts  of  men  to  special  uses. 

The  worship  of  The  Holy  One  of  Israel  has  divided  the 
life  of  men  into  the  sacred  and  the  common.  One  day  in 
seven  is  sacred,  the  other  six  are  the  common  days  of  the 
week.  On  the  common  days  you  may  sing  or  dance,  on 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS         137 

sacred  days  you  must  go  softly  and  walk  in  the  bitterness 
of  your  soul.  The  men  who  do  the  common  work  of  life, 
who  plow  and  sow  and  reap  and  build,  who  marry  and  are 
given  in  marriage,  are  common  men.  The  men  who  wait 
upon  God,  who  stand  before  his  altar  and  break  his  bread 
are  holy  men,  reverend  men,  right  reverend  men,  and  most 
reverend  men. 

This  division  of  human  life  into  the  sacred  and  profane, 
while  it  has  been  useful  in  a  way,  has,  on  the  whole,  been 
detrimental  to  the  proper  development  both  of  the  gods  and 
of  men.  A  holy  god  is  a  god  apart ;  the  sphere  of  his  influ- 
ence is  circumscribed ;  he  cannot  go  down  into  the  market, 
lest  his  holiness  be  contaminated  with  the  vulgarity  of  trade ; 
he  cannot  mix  in  politics  without  loss  to  his  reputation.  A 
holy  god  may  not  marry  nor  be  given  in  marriage,  for  that 
is  to  be  in  the  place  of  the  breaking  forth  children ;  he  may 
not  indulge  in  scientific  pursuits,  lest  he  become  involved  in 
the  impurities  of  nature.  Under  the  restrictions  placed  upon 
him  by  his  holiness,  a  god  can  only  assume  the  role  of  a 
preacher  who  preaches  an  abstract  righteousness  of  which  the 
world  is  not  worthy,  and  which  the  world,  in  consequence, 
lets  severely  alone.  Such  a  god  may  be  an  object  of  worship, 
— a  narcotic  for  spiritual  insomnia ;  he  may  inhabit  beautiful 
churches  and  marvelous  temples,  but  his  seclusion  has  cost 
him  his  liberty.  He  can  no  longer  make  the  clouds  his 
chariots,  nor  fly  on  the  wings  of  the  winds.  He  can  no 
longer  walk  in  the  garden  in  the  cool  of  the  day  nor  consort 
with  the  camel-drivers  of  the  desert.  I  myself  have  been  a 
reverend  man,  and  I  know  how  irksome  it  is.  It  narrows 
outlook,  curtails  opportunity,  and  impoverishes  life. 

But  if  the  gods  and  priests  of  the  gods  suffer  from  this 
specialization,  upon  the  common  man  is  entailed  a  greater 
loss,  a  more  far-reaching  disaster.  As  the  god  tends  to  be- 
come imprisoned  in  his  holiness,  so  the  man  is  apt  to  be  en- 
meshed in  his  commonness.  Since  he  cannot  walk  day  by 
day  with  gods  and  heroes,  he  is  content  to  walk  with  fools 
and  knaves.  Since  goddesses  cannot  visit  him,  he  satisfies 
himself  with  silly  women.  Business  and  politics  are  corrupt 


138        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

because  the  fear  of  the  gods  is  not  in  them.  Jehovah-Kodesh 
sometimes  sadly  interferes  with  the  work  of  Jehovah-Zadek.  A 
man  connot  do  much  work  in  the  world  who  is  afraid  of 
defilement.  "Every  battle  of  the  warrior  is  with  confused 
noise  and  garments  rolled  in  blood."  A  battle-field  is  not 
a  savory  place.  A  man  or  a  woman  may  sometimes  have  to 
risk  virtue  as  well  as  life  in  the  struggle  for  betterment. 

But  while  holiness  has  thus  been  detrimental  to  a  rounder 
development  of  the  conception  of  God  in  his  relation  to  him- 
self and  to  man,  yet  to  lose  that  idea  altogether  would  be 
disastrous.  Jehovah-Zadek  is  a  definition  of  religion  in  terms 
of  social  righteousness ;  Jehovah-Kodesh  is  a  definition  of  reli- 
gion in  terms  of  personal  integrity.  A  god  must  be  in  the 
world,  but  not  of  it ;  in  politics,  but  not  a  politician ;  in  busi- 
ness, but  not  a  business  man. 

Personality  must  always  be  above  and  greater  than  en- 
vironment. A  man  of  the  world  is  always  less  than  a  man : 
the  world  rules  him  when  he  should  rule  the  world.  It  is 
this  fear  of  merging  personality  into  environment  that  drives 
men  into  the  wilderness  and  makes  of  them  anchorites.  Even 
a  god  can  only  escape  from  this  danger  of  submergence  by 
withdrawing  himself  from  phenomena.  To  think  of  him  as 
god  we  must  think  of  him  as  abstract.  It  is  well  both  for 
gods  and  men  to  go  apart  from  time  to  time  into  a  secret 
place  and  rest  awhile.  But  the  great  god  and  the  great  man 
is  the  one  who  can  at  the  same  time  be  Jehovah  The  Right- 
eous and  Jehovah  The  Holy,  who  can  be  busy  in  the  world 
and  silent  in  soul. 

John  the  Baptist  came  neither  eating  nor  drinking;  Jesus 
came  eating  and  drinking, — so  much  so  that  men  called  him 
a  "gluttonous  man  and  a  winebibber ;  a  friend  of  publicans  and 
sinners."  Men  since  then  have  seen  in  John  a  prophet;  but 
in  Jesus  they  have  seen  a  God. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        139 

CHAPTER  XXVIII 
The  God  of  The  Book 

In  the  Sixth  Century  before  our  era  the  religion  of  Jehovah 
suffered  a  change  revolutionary  in  its  character  and  far-reach- 
ing in  its  effect  on  the  religious  life  of  the  Western  world. 
Toward  the  end  of  that  century  Jerusalem,  the  City  of  Je- 
hovah, after  a  long  and  cruel  siege,  was  taken  by  Nebuazar- 
Adan,  General  of  the  King  of  Babylon ;  the  temple  of  Jehovah 
was  defiled,  the  walls  of  the  city  were  broken  down,  its  gates 
burned  with  fire,  and  its  people  carried  captive  to  Babylon. 

According  to  all  precedent,  this  debacle  should  have  been 
the  end  of  the  career  of  Jehovah  as  a  god.  Unable  to  protect 
his  city  against  the  violence  of  the  stranger;  compelled,  in 
his  impotence,  to  see  his  temple  profaned  and  his  altar  dese- 
crated ;  powerless  to  save,  this  god  had  to  stand  by  and  see 
his  young  men  slain  at  the  head  of  the  streets  and  the  virgin 
daughters  of  Zion  violated  within  the  courts  of  the  sanctuary. 
The  fall  of  Jerusalem  was  the  apparent  defeat  and  disgrace 
of  the  God  of  Jerusalem;  the  ruined  city  was  evidence  to  all 
who  passed  by  of  a  ruined  god. 

That  the  religion  of  Jehovah  should  have  survived  this 
disaster,  and  out  of  this  calamity  should  have  devised  the 
means  whereby  that  religion  became  not  only  the  religion  of 
the  Jew  but  the  religion  of  the  Western  world,  is  a  marvel 
of  history  so  striking  that  one  cannot  wonder  that  this  marvel 
has  been  ascribed  to  the  direct  action  of  Jehovah  himself. 
Because  he  was  able  to  do  this  thing  he  has  lifted  himself 
far  above  all  the  city  gods  of  the  ancient  world,  and  to-day 
instead  of  being,  like  the  ruck  of  city  gods,  known  only  to 
scholars  as  the  obscure  deity  of  a  little  hill  town  of  Syria, 
he  is  hailed  and  worshipped  as  the  God  of  the  Whole  Earth. 
How  did  he  do  it? 

The  means  were  as  simple  as  the  effect  was  wonderful. 
He  transformed  his  character  from  that  of  the  God  of  the 
City  into  the  form  of  a  God  of  the  Book. 


140        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Of  all  the  achievements  of  humanity  next  in  importance 
after  the  evolution  of  speech,  is  the  invention  of  writing. 
Beginning  with  small  pictures  cut  in  stone,  and  on  the  bones 
that  lay  in  his  cave,  man  began  to  make  an  outward  record 
of  the  thoughts  of  his  mind.  The  lion  that  he  had  seen  with 
his  eye  he  reproduced  with  his  hand.  This,  which  at  first 
was  an  amusement  of  his  idleness,  he  soon  found  to  be  useful. 
It  was  an  assistance  to  his  memory.  The  beast  that  he 
killed  yesterday  he  could  picture  to-day  and  look  on  to- 
morrow. And  not  only  could  he  keep  before  his  own  eye 
the  image  of  what  that  eye  had  seen,  but  he  could  also  show 
it  to  others, — by  means  of  this  picture-writing  he  could  con- 
vey the  thought  of  his  mind  to  the  mind  of  another.  That 
other  might  be  far  away  out  of  the  reach  of  the  sound  of  his 
voice ;  yet  by  means  of  his  picture  the  picture-maker  could 
send  his  message  to  the  mind  of  his  friend  or  his  enemy ; 
he  could  send  his  thoughts  of  peace  in  the  form  of  a  dove, 
and  his  feeling  of  hatred  in  the  guise  of  a  serpent.  As  a 
consequence  of  this  effort  on  the  part  of  man  to  record  and 
convey  his  impressions,  we  have  the  picture-writing  of  Egypt, 
and,  as  an  improvement  on  this,  the  phonetic  alphabet, — .1 
marvel  so  great  that  it  has  ceased  to  be  marvelous. 

The  phonetic  alphabet,  as"  the  name  implies,  was  an  inven- 
tion of  the  Phoenicians  as  a  sort  of  shorthand  picture-writing 
to  be  used  in  commercial  transactions.  It  is  based  upon  the 
principle  that  while  the  human  voice  is  capable  of  only  a 
limited  number  of  elementary  sounds,  yet,  by  the  combina- 
tion of  these  elements,  an  unlimited  number  of  words  can  be 
and  are  produced.  So  we  have  letters,  representing  these 
elementary  sounds,  and  by  combining  the  letters  we  have 
words  that  transform  sound  into  sight,  and  so  have  a  written 
as  well  as  a  spoken  language.  This  invention  enabled  a 
man  to  reveal  and  express  his  thought  with  a  fullness  and 
accuracy  impossible  in  picture-writing ;  and  from  that  time 
to  this  man  has  not  only  been  a  builder  of  cities  but  also 
a  writer  of  books. 

It  was  this  contrivance  that  Jehovah  made  use  of,  after 
his  city  was  destroyed,  to  keep  his  hold  on  the  worship  of 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  141 

his  people  and  his  name  alive  in  the  earth.     Just  before  and  -J 
during  the  captivity  in  Babylon  the  legends  of  the  god  and  \ 
the  people  of  Israel  were  reduced  to  writing  by  men  whose 
gift  for  story-telling  has  been  unrivalled  in   the  history   of 
narration.      During  that  period  great  thinkers,  such  as  Isaiah 
the  elder,  Micah,  and  Jeremiah,  had  spoken  in  the  name  of 
the  Lord,  and  their  words  had  been  written  upon  tablets  by  ; 
the  scribes,  and  so  preserved  for  future  generations.      Sing- 
ers had  sung  psalms  in  the  temple  of  Jehovah,  on  the  hills 
of  Judah,  beside  the  river  of  Babylon  and  in  the  streets  of 
the  city  of  their  captivity,  and  these  hyms  had  been  gathered 
into  the  song-book  of  Jehovah. 

On  the  Sabbath  Day  the  captive  children  of  Jehovah  gath- 
ered in  a  common  meeting-place,  and  these  books  were  read 
in  their  ears  by  ministers  appointed  for  the  purpose.  The 
books  were  sacred  and  the  hearing  and  the  reading  an  act 
of  worship.  We  of  to-day  can  have  no  conception  of  the 
effect  of  this  reading  upon  the  minds  of  the  hearers.  In 
those  days  books  were  not  printed,  they  were  written ;  they 
were  not  published,  they  were  read.  Every  book  was  divine ; 
every  word  inspired. 

The  effect  of  this  innovation  upon  the  religious  life  of 
the  people  was  revolutionary.  It  changed  radically  the  mode 
of  man's  approach  to  God.  The  old  form  of  worship  by 
means  of  animal  sacrifice  gave  place  to  the  hearing  of  the 
word.  When  we  think  of  primitive  religious  v/orship,  Jewish 
and  Gentile,  and  remember  that  every  temple  was  a  slaughter- 
house; that  the  priests  of  the  Greek  gods  were  called  butch- 
ers ;  that  when  one  came  near  a  house  of  worship,  one  heard 
the  lowing  of  cattle  and  the  bleating  of  sheep,  and  within 
the  house  one  was  sickened  by  the  smell  of  fresh  blood  and 
burning  flesh,  it  is  easily  seen  how  great  was  the  change  from 
such  a  worship  as  this  to  a  worship  which  consisted  of  read- 
ing and  hearing  a  book. 

It  is  not  to  be  inferred  that  those  who  were  at  the  first 
engaged  in  this  mode  of  divine  worship  were  conscious  of 
the  revolution  that  they  were  effecting.  Far  from  it.  Their 
songs  are  songs  of  bitter  regret  that  they  cannot  sacrifice 


142  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

their  offerings  of  blood  on  the  altar  of  their  God  in  Jerusalem. 
Their  city  and  their  City  God  were  still  the  object  of  their 
passionate  devotion.  They  hardly  thought  of  their  new  form 
of  worship  as  worship,  but  only  as  a  reminder  of  a  worship 
they  had  lost.  So  soon  as  they  could,  a  remnant  of  this 
people  returned  to  Jerusalem,  rebuilt  the  temple,  and  restored 
the  sacrifices.  But  the  greater  number  remained  in  Babylon 
and  were  men  of  the  synagogue  and  not  men  of  the  temple, 
and  in  the  synagogue  the  center  of  worship  was  not  the 
altar, — there  was  no  altar  there, — but  the  reading  desk. 
.'  From  the  time  of  the  Babylonish  captivity  begins  the  dis- 
persion of  the  Jew.  The  Jews  ceased  to  be  an  agricultural 
people,  they  became  merchants  and  money  lenders.  Then, 
as  now,  they  congregated  in  cities,  resisting  assimilation, 
maintaining  their  tribal  organizations,  meeting  in  their  syna- 
gogues to  hear  the  word  of  their  God.  Jehovah  was  their 
God  and  Jerusalem  his  city, — then  and  there  only  could  the 
sacrifices  be  offered  on  his  altar.  The  self-exiled  Jew  in 
Alexandria  and  Rome  could  go  to  Jerusalem  only  now  and 
then ;  some  never  visited  the  sacred  shrine,  and  since  he  could 
not  offer  a  calf  of  a  year  old,  he  had  to  offer  the  calves  of 
his  lips;  as  he  could  not  eat  of  the  meat  of  the  sacrifice,  he 
had  to  feed  on  the  word  of  his  God.  So  it  came  to  be  a 
saying:  "Man  doth  not  live  by  bread  alone,  but  by  every 
word  that  proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  God  doth  man 
live." 

So  the  change  came  about. 

In  all  the  cities  where  the  Jews  sojourned  the  stranger 
entering  their  place  of  worship  was  astonished  to  find  that 
place  without  an  image  and  without  an  altar, — only  a  man 
standing  up  to  read,  only  a  people  sitting  to  listen.  Little 
by  little  the  ancient  Hebrew  language  was  forgotten  and  in 
its  place  came  the  Greek  or  the  Arabic,  so  that  the  stranger 
was  able  to  hear  in  his  own  tongue  the  marvelous  words  of 
God ;  and  they  who  came  once  came  again ;  and  thus  the 
word  of  the  Lord  was  preached  in  every  city  and  the  revolu- 
tion in  religious  worship  became  not  local  but  universal. 

The  Jews  divided  their  sacred  writings  into  three  classes: 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        143 

the  Torah  or  the  Law;  the  Prophets,  and  the  Sacred  Writ- 
ings. In  the  Torah  or  the  Books  of  the  Law  were  found 
the  rules  by  which  the  Jew  disciplined  his  life ;  in  the  Prophets 
was  written  the  history  of  his  people,  and  in  the  Psalms  their 
aspirations.  So  that  in  this  collection  of  books  the  Jew  had 
a  method  of  discipline,  a  philosophy  of  history,  and  a  means 
of  culture.  And  so  superior  to  all  others  in  existence  at  the 
time  were  these  essentials  of  human  development  that  the 
Jew  forced  their  use,  for  these  purposes,  upon  the  Western 
world.  The  books  of  the  Hebrews  became  in  due  time  the 
rule  of  discipline,  the  philosophy  of  history,  the  means  of 
culture  to  the  Mediterranean  world  and  to  all  the  people  who 
have  derived  their  civilization  from  the  Mediterranean  basin. 
Europe  and  America,  even  to  this  day,  profess  the  religion 
of  Jehovah,  the  God  of  the  Book. 

In  this  Book  God  is  set  forth  as  the  judge,  the  ruler,  and 
the  teacher  of  men.  God  as  judge  is  both  the  maker  and 
the  interpreter  of  the  law.  As  it  is  written,  there  is  One 
lawgiver.  These  laws  are  statutes  and  ordinances,  com- 
mandments and  decrees  issued  by  Jehovah  for  the  govern- 
ment of  the  people.  They  are  not  merely  principles  of  gov- 
ernment, they  are  specific  acts  of  legislation,  regulating  the 
most  minute  affairs  of  life  down  even  to  the  way  of  washing 
pots  and  kettles. 

As  we  are  told  by  high  Jewish  authority: 

"The  Torah  contains  rules  and  regulations  which  should 
govern  the  life  of  man  and  lead  him  to  moral  and  religious 
perfection.  Every  rule  is  expressive  of  a  fundamental,  eth- 
ical, or  religious  idea.  Those  regulations  in  which  human 
intelligence  is  unable  to  discern  the  fundamental  idea  are, 
through  belief  in  their  divine  origin,  vouchsafed  the  same 
high  religious  importance ;  and  the  ethical  value  of  submis- 
sion to  the  will  of  God  where  its  purpose  is  not  understood 
is  even  greater.  In  observing  the  Law  man's  good  intention 
is  the  main  point."  l 

Mewish  Encyclopedia,  vol.  xii,  p.  133. 


144  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

r*^"*"  . 

The  will  of  Jehovah  is  the  basis  of  morals.  What  Jehovah 
nils  is  right  because  he  wills  it.  Jehovah  has  spoken;  man 

[must  obey.  This  divine  basis  of  morals  is  of  the  essence 
>f  the  religion  of  Jehovah, — The  God  of  the  Book.  Its  effect 

for  good  and  for  ill  upon  the  religious  life  of  mankind  will 

be  seen  as  we  watch  the  progression  of  this  god  from  a  local 

to  a  wider  dominion. 


CHAPTER   XXIX 

The  God  of  Inspiration 

It  is  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  the  religion  of  Jehovah 
in  its  competition  with  the  other  religions  of  the  world  that 
its  god  is  the  God  of  the  Working  Class.  This  fact  has 
given  to  its  literature  a  cultural  power  far  surpassing  that 
of  any  other  literature  known  to  history.  The  holy  books 
of  the  Jewish  people  are  the  vade  mecum  of  a  civilization. 
Their  study  is  not  the  occupation  of  the  scholar,  it  is  the  em- 
ployment of  the  artisans,  "the  mean  workman,"  as  Bishop 
Andrews  calls  him,  and  of  the  poor.  This  literature  is  not 
only  explained  by  professors  to  classes,  it  is  expounded  by 
preachers  to  congregations.  It  is  the  handbook  of  worship 
and  the  guide  of  life  to  the  multitude.  Its  words  are  read 
at  the  consecration  of  the  new-born  child,  at  the  marriage 
of  the  bride  to  the  bridegroom,  and  at  the  burial  of  the  dead. 

(The  place  this  literature  has  held  in  the  Western  world  is^Wv, 
no  mere  accident;  it  is  popular  because  it  is  the  literature  of  j 
the  people, — written  by  the  people  for  the  people.  Js 

The  literature  of  Greece, — the  only  literature  that  can  com- 
pare in  cultural  power  with  the  literature  of  the  Hebrew, — is 
the  literature  of  the  leisure  class,  written  by  the  leisure  class, 
for  the  leisure  class.  The  Homeric  poems  alone,  of  all  the 
writings  of  the  Greeks,  make  any  appeal  to  the  common  man ; 
and  even  Homer  is  the  poet  of  heroes  and  not  the  poet  of 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  145 

common  men.  The  interest  of  the  ordinary  man  in  the  "Iliad" 
is  the  glimpse  it  gives  him  into  the  life  and  doings  of  gods 
and  divine  men.  He  reads  of  all  this  with  the  same  avidity 
that  the  chambermaid  reads  of  the  duchess;  it  stirs  his 
imagination,  it  does  not  move  his  heart.  As  for  the  great 
tragedies  of  the  Greek  poets,  they,  even  more  than  the 
tragedies  of  Shakespeare,  are  caviar  to  the  public;  they, 
too,  have  primarily  to  do  with  gods  and  princes,  with  prob- 
lems of  fate  as  exhibited  in  the  lives  of  the  great. 

The  philosophers  of  Greece,  who  correspond  in  a  way 
to  the  prophets  of  Israel,  addressed  themselves  consciously 
to  the  leisure,  cultured  class.  For  the  workingman,  whether 
a  slave  or  a  free  artisan,  these  philosophers  had  a  profound 
contempt.  The  mass  of  the  people,  who  did  the  world's  work, 
were  no  more  to  the  philosopher  than  were  the  beasts  of  the 
stall.  Aristotle  argues  the  necessity  of  slavery  from  the  fact 
that  without  slavery  there  can  be  no  philosophy.  The  slave 
must  work  that  the  philosopher  may  think.  All  education, 
in  the  Grecian  world,  is  the  product  of  a  leisure  secured  to 
the  leisure  class  by  the  unrequited  toil  of  the  workers.  Our 
word  "school"  is  derived  from  the  Greek  word  crxoXiQ,  which 
means  "play"  or  "leisure."  As  a  consequence  of  their  com- 
plete alienation  from  the  working  class,  the  Greek  philos- 
ophers have  never  made  the  slightest  appeal  to  that  class. 
The  Greek  religion  perished  because  the  Greek  thinkers  could 
not  interpret  that  religion  in  the  terms  of  the  common  life. 
They  were  busy  spinning  out  of  their  brains  their  theories  of 
the  universe,  never  once  asking  what  the  people  might  be 
thinking  on  these  same  problems.  Thus,  while  the  indirect 
influence  of  Greek  thought  upon  the  intellectual  life  of  the 
Western  world  has  been  very  great,  its  influence  on  the  moral 
and  spiritual  life  has  been  almost  nil. 

Even  when  the  Greek  writers  do  deal  with  the  common 
life  of  the  common  people,  it  is  always  from  the  leisure-class 
point  of  view.  In  the  pastorals  of  Theocritus,  in  the  "Ec- 
logues" and  "Georgics"  of  Vergil,  we  have  that  picture  of 
pastoral  life  that  has  become  classic.  It  is  the  picture  so 
popular  on  Dresden  china  of  the  shepherd  piping,  not  to  his 


146  THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

sheep  but  to  his  love.  In  this  conception  of  shepherd  life 
the  sheep  are  nothing  but  the  background  of  the  shepherd's 
love-making.  He  drives  them  to  pasture,  not  that  they  may 
feed,  but  that  he  may  sigh.  Classical  poetry  knows  nothing 
of  the  life  of  the  shepherd  as  shepherd.  It  is  a  song  about  a 
shepherd,  not  a  song  of  a  shepherd.  And  this,  in  a  measure,  is 
the  fatal  defect  of  classical  literature  in  general ;  it  is  not  vital 
to  human  experience. 

How  different  is  the  pastoral  poetry  of  Hebrew  literature 
from  that  of  the  classic!  Here  we  have  a  song  not  about 
the  shepherd,  but  a  song  of  the  shepherd.  We  learn  to  our 
surprise  that  the  shepherd  is  not  at  all  occupied  with  thoughts 
of  love,  as  the  classic  world  supposed,  he  has  a  love  but  it 
is  not  for  a  woman,  however  fair;  it  is  for  the  sheep.  It  is 
to  the  sheep  he  pipes,  to  call  them  in  and  to  call  them  out; 
he  leads  the  sheep  into  the  green  pasture,  that  they  may  feed ; 
and  beside  the  still  waters,  that  they  may  drink;  when  they 
pass  through  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death  his  rod  and 
his  staff  are  there  to  comfort  them.  David  was  a  shepherd, 
and  as  a  shepherd  sang  of  the  shepherd's  life.  Because  of 
this,  the  shepherd  song  of  David  (if  it  be  his  song,  and  whether 
his  or  another's,  it  is  the  song  of  a  shepherd)  is  in  the  heart 
and  on  the  lips  of  millions,  while  the  pastorals  of  Theocritus 
and  Virgil  are  not  known  outside  of  a  little  circle  which  finds 
amusement  in  their  trifling. 

And  this  vitality  is  characteristic  of  the  whole  of  Hebrew 
literature  when  that  literature  was  in  its  golden  age.  Isaiah 
and  Jeremiah  differ  essentially  from  Sophocles  and  Euripedes. 
The  Greek  poet  celebrated  the  misfortune  of  a  king;  the 
Hebrew  poet  the  calamities  of  the  people.  The  Greek  poet 
sang  a  song  about  suffering;  the  Hebrew  a  song  of  suffering. 
The  threnody  of  Jeremiah  over  the  desolation  of  Jerusalem 
is  not  the  conscious  expression  of  an  imagined  emotion ;  it 
is  the  unconscious  cry  of  a  broken  heart. 

The  literature  of  the  Hebrew  is  the  literature  of  pathos, 
because  the  Hebrews  are  a  pathetic  people.  And  that  liter- 
ature makes  its  appeal,  because  of  its  pathos,  to  the  universal 
heart  of  man ;  for  man's  life  is  pathetic  even  to  tears.  It  is 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  147 

as  Father  Hall  says  in  the  story  of  John  Inglesant:  "Only 
the  infinite  pity  is  commensurate  to  the  infinite  pathos  of 
human  life." 

"The  voice  said  cry,  and  I  said,  what  shall  I  cry?  All  flesh 
is  grass  and  all  the  goodliness  thereof  as  the  flower  of  the 
field,  the  grass  withereth  and  the  flower  fadeth.  In  the 
morning  it  is  green  and  groweth  up,  in  the  evening  it  is  cut 
down,  dried  up  and  withered.  The  days  of  our  age  are  three- 
score years  and  ten  and  though  a  man  be  so  strong  that  he 
come  to  fourscore  years,  yet  is  their  strength  but  labor  and 
sorrow,  so  soon  passeth  it  away  and  we  are  gone.  ...  In 
Rama  was  there  a  voice  heard,  lamentation  and  great  weep- 
ing, Rachel  weeping  for  her  children  and  refused  to  be  com- 
forted because  they  are  not.  .  .  .  Ye  will  bring  down  my 
grey  hairs  in  sorrow  to  the  grave.  .  .  .  As  a  sheep  before  her 
shearers  is  dumb  so  he  openeth  not  his  mouth ;  the  walls  of 
Jerusalem  are  broken  down  and  her  gates  burned  with  fire. 
...  I  have  trodden  the  wine  press  alone  and  of  the  people 
there  is  none  with  me." 

All  the  pathos  of  life  is  summed  up  in  such  sayings  as 
these ;  the  death  of  children  and  the  weakness  of  age ;  the 
shortness  of  life  and  the  futility  of  life;  unrequited  toil  and 
innocence  condemned ;  exile  from  home  and  home  defiled ; 
the  ingratitude  of  children  and  the  indifference  of  a  people ; 
a  city  corrupt  and,  because  corrupt,  a  city  desolate ;  the  lone- 
liness of  the  great  and  the  greatness  of  loneliness ;  words  that 
break  the  heart  and  hearts  that  break  the  word.  All  of 
this  pathos  of  life  comes  from  the  lips  of  this  pathetic  people 
doomed  from  the  first  to  a  life  of  hardship  and  of  suffering; 
wandering  shepherds  in  a  desert  where  there  was  no  water; 
strangers  in  a  land  that  was  not  theirs ;  the  children  of  bond- 
age condemned  to  build  the  tombs  of  the  Pharaohs ;  lovers 
of  a  land  that  they  could  not  possess ;  carried  captive  to  Bab- 
ylon ;  kneeling  three  times  a  day  with  their  faces  toward  Jer- 
usalem; praying  to  a  god  silent  and  distant, — a  god  who 
seems  to  have  put  them  in  the  wine  vat  that  he  might  trample 
them  in  his  anger  until  his  feet  are  purple  with  their  blood. 


148  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

And  what  shall  we  say  more?  Is  not  this  a  people  who 
have  been  robbed  of  their  birthright ;  whose  Holy  Books  have 
been  stolen  from  them  and  turned  against  them ;  are  they 
not  the  children  of  the  Ghetto  who  have  been  hunted  like 
dogs  from  their  kennels ;  people  of  the  yellow  gaberdine  who 
are  spit  upon  and  take  it  patiently  because  sufferance  is  the 
badge  of  all  their  tribe?  Is  not  this  people  a  people  apart 
in  their  sufferings,  that  through  them  a  suffering  humanity 
might  give  adequate  expressions  to  the  emotions  of  its  broken 
heart? 

But  hark!  how  through  all  this  threnody  there  sounds 
the  note  of  defiant  hope.  Israel,  in  spite  of  its  shame  and 
suffering,  still  is  and  ever  will  be  the  people  of  God.  And 
God,  for  His  name's  sake,  must  care  for  the  people.  He  can- 
not let  the  people  perish,  lest  His  name  be  a  reproach  to  the 
heathen.  Israel's  sufferings  are  God's  opportunities.  They 
do  not  suffer  alone, — God  suffers  with  them.  In  all  their 
affliction  He  is  afflicted,  and  the  Angel  of  His  Presence  saves 
them.  Who  is  this  that  cometh  from  Edom  with  dyed  gar- 
ments from  Bozrah?  He  that  is  mighty  to  save.  Israel 
is  marked  as  God's  people,  not  in  spite  of  his  sufferings  but 
because  of  his  sufferings.  "He  is  despised  and  rejected  of 
men.  A  man  of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief.  My 
servant  is  more  marred  than  any  man  and  his  visage  than 
the  sons  of  men.  Is  it  nothing  to  you,  all  ye  that  pass  by, 
was  there  ever  sorrow  like  unto  my  sorrow?  Surely  the 
Lord  hath  afflicted  Him  and  put  Him  to  grief." 

But  after  defeat  is  victory;  after  shame,  honor;  after  slav- 
ery, deliverance;  after  death,  life.  "A  way  shall  there  be 
and  a  highway,  and  the  redeemed  of  the  Lord  shall  come 
to  Zion  with  songs  on  their  lips.  He  shall  restore  the  waste 
places.  He  shall  build  up  the  tabernacle  of  David  that  is 
broken  down.  He  who  now  goeth  on  his  way  weeping, 
bearing  good  seed,  shall  doubtless  come  again  with  joy  and 
bring  his  sheaves  with  him.  The  Lord  even  the  most  mighty 
God  hath  spoken  and  called  the  world  from  the  rising  of  the 
sun  even  to  the  going  down  of  the  same." 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  149 

The  literature  of  Israel  has  taken  captive  the  common  peo-' 
pie,  because  it  is  expressive  of  the  life  of  the  common  people. 
It  voices  the  experience,  the  thoughts,  and   feelings  of  the 
working  class.      It  speaks  of  the  life  of  those  who  go  forth  '• 
to  their  work  and  to  their  labor  until  the  evening,  who  bear 
the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day,  who  suffer  the  injustice  of 
unrequited  toil,  who  endure  the  ignominy  of  obscurity,  who 
work  without  reward  and  die  without  fame,  who  sow  that 
others  may   reap,  and   die  that  others  may   live.    They  are 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  soldiery  of  whom   Napoleon   said : 
"What  are  a  hundred  thousand  men  to  me?" — the  rank  and 
file  of  the  industrial  army  of  whom  one  dies  for  every  floor 
that  is  laid  in  a  modern  building;  slaves  of  the  mine,  who  are 
suffocated  by  gas  and  burned  by  fire  damp ;  stokers  in  boiler 
rooms,  famishing  in  the  heat  while  the  passengers  are  dancing 
on  the  deck;  women  bearing  ten  children  and  burying  eight. 
This  is  humanity  enslaved  and  exiled,  who,  with  Paul  and 
Silas  in  their  prison,  sing  of  Christ  the  Lord  arisen.      These 
are  prisoners  of  hope,  always  despised  and  never  ashamed  ; 
always  defeated,  but  never  destroyed ;  children  of  the  slum 
living  apart,  children  of  the  shoddy  clothing  spit  upon   by 
those  whom  they  serve, — ever  patient,  even  hopeful,  working 
day  by  day  for  a  bit  of  bread,  and  by  their  surplus  product 
making  possible  science  and  art  and  government  and  law  and 
religion.      It  is  because  of  this  that,  while  the  dialogues  of 
Plato  and  the  tragedies  of  Sophocles  and  the  songs  of  Pindar 
are  the  delight  of  the  scholar,  the  Psalms  of  David  and  the 
Prophecies  of  Isaiah,  the  Lamentations  of  Jeremiah  and  the 
story  of  Ruth,  are  the  consolation  of  the  Cotter's  Saturday 
Night.      Jehovah  has  triumphed  over  the  other  gods,  most  }, 
of  all  because  he  is  the  God  of  Inspiration.      He  is  the  Holy  | 
Air,  the  breathing  of  which   is  the  common   right  and  the  * 
source  of  the  common  life. 


150  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

CHAPTER  XXX 
Jehovah:  Creator  of  Heaven  and  Earth 

If  we  accept  Burke's  definition  of  the  sublime,  we  shall 
not  find  in  human  writing  greater  sublimity  than  is  revealed 
to  us  in  the  opening  chapter  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  In 
that  chapter  and  to  the  end  of  the  third  verse  of  the  second 
chapter  we  have  a  Hymn  of  Creation  that,  in  grandeur  of 
conception  and  in  beauty  and  simplicity  of  language,  ranks 
among  the  highest  achievements  of  human  genius.  Thought 
and  language  can  hardly  go  beyond  the  work  of  this  Hebrew 
poet.  As  a  thinker  he  anticipated  later  philosophy  and  fore- 
shadowed modern  science. 

In  the  opening  words  of  this  hymn  all  mysteries  are  sug- 
gested, the  finite  and  the  infinite,  the  temporal  and  the  eternal 
meet  and  mingle.  In  order  to  grasp  the  meaning  of  this 
writer  in  its  fulness  one  must  read  him  in  his  own  tongue, 
no  translation  does  him  justice.  Our  English  rendering  fails 
to  convey  accurately  the  meaning  of  the  Hebrew  words.  We 
read :  "In  the  beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the 
earth,"  but  we  do  not  have  in  mind  the  god  nor  the  creation 
that  was  in  the  mind  of  this  poet. 

Brought  up,  as  we  have  been,  under  another  theological 
influence,  our  God  is  a  God  apart  from  the  universe,  and  crea- 
tion is  the  making  of  something  out  of  nothing.  Neither 
of  these  thoughts  was  in  the  mind  of  this  author.  In  his 
day  that  dread  abstraction  whom  we  call  God,  sitting  in  his 
lonely  heaven,  was  not  yet  conceived  by  the  thought  of  man. 
The  mind  of  man  was  hovering  in  those  days  between  pol- 
ytheism and  pantheism,  between  the  worship  of  the  forces 
of  nature  as  many,  and  the  worship  of  the  force  of  nature  as 
one.  The  poet's  writing  is  evidence  of  that  transition :  the 
gods  are  plural,  their  act  is  singular. 

The  act  of  creation  celebrated  in  this  poem  is  not  the  mak- 
ing out  of  nothing,  it  is  rearrangement  of  already  existing 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  151 

material.  The  word  God  is  in  the  plural,  Elohim,  and  means 
literally  "the  strong  ones";  the  word  Bara  translated  "creat- 
ed," means  "to  arrange,"  "to  shape."  So  we  may  render  the 
verse  in  this  wise : 

In  our  beginning  the  strong  ones  arranged  the  heavens  and  the 
earth.  Before  that  the  earth  was  a  wilderness  and  a  desolation ;  and 
darkness  was  upon  the  face  of  the  deep. 

And  from  this  point  the  writer  goes  on  to  describe  pro- 
gressive rearrangements,  or  creations,  passing  successively 
from  lower  to  higher  forms  of  life. 

This  ancient  poet  gives  us  in  vivid  language  the  most  ab- 
stract thought  that  the  human  mind  can  entertain.  Spinoza 
expresses  this  thought  by  the  words :  natura  naturans, — nature 
naturing, — eternal  energy  energizing  in  time  and  space.  All 
that  we  are,  all  that  we  see  and  hear,  all  that  we  feel  and 
think  are  nothing  else  than  this  natura  naturans, — this  eternal 
energy  energizing  in  time  and  space;  and  time  and  space  are 
nothing  else  than  his  eternal  energizing.  Reduced  to  its  low- 
est philosophical  denominator,  this  is  pure  pantheism ;  it  is 

say:  "God  is  the  world  and  the  world  is  God." 

Out  of  this  conception  a  philosophy  may  be  formed,  but 
not  a  religion.  The  pure  reason  may  comprehend,  but  the 
common  mind  cannot  take  in  anything  so  abstract.  All  our 
mythologies  and  all  our  religions  have  been  unconscious  efforts 
on  the  part  of  the  mind  to  resolve  this  abstraction  into  con- 
crete forms,  to  cut  out  from  this  abstraction  gods  nearer  the 
heart  and  life  of  man. 

In  the  chapter  in  our  Bible  immediately  following  this 
Hymn  of  Creation  we  have  an  effort, — and  that  most  success- 
ful,— to  reduce  this  Infinite  to  finite  proportions.  Jean  As- 
true,  a  French  physician  (1684-1766)  was  the  first  biblical 
student  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  there  are  in  the  book 
of  Genesis  two  accounts  of  creation,  differing  essentially  one 
from  the  other.  Scholars  tell  us  that  the  second  account  of 
creation  is  the  earlier  in  time,  and  that  the  Hymn  of  Creation 
is  an  interpretation  by  a  later  writer  of  the  primitive  account. 


152        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Beginning  with  the  fourth  verse  of  Chapter  II,  we  have  this 
second  account  opening  with  the  words : 

These  are  the  generations  of  the  heaven  and  the  earth  in  the  day 
of  their  making  by  Jehovah  Elohim  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth. 

The  difference  between  this  and  that  other  conception  of 
creation  at  first  is  very  slight,  but  it  is  a  difference  that  is 
divergence  leading  into  new  regions  of  thought  and  feeling. 
First,  and  most  important,  the  tribal  god  of  the  Hebrews 
has  become  identified  with  the  Creator  of  the  universe,  no 
change  that  I  can  recall,  in  human  thinking,  can  in  practical 
importance,  be  compared  with  this  identification  of  Elohim 
with  Jehovah  by  this  unknown  Hebrew  thinker.  It  lifted 
the  War  God  of  Israel  to  the  throne  of  the  universe. 

The  word,  translated  "create,"  is  no  longer  the  concrete 
word  Bara,  "to  cut,"  "to  fashion,"  it  is  the  more  abstract 
word  Asoth,  "to  do."  In  this  conception  the  manifold  uni- 
verse of  sun  and  moon  and  star,  of  land  and  water,  of  creep- 
ing thing,  of  bird  and  beast  and  man,  is  the  handiwork  of  a 
personal  Being  who  is  none  other  than  Jehovah,  the  God  of 
Israel;  and  because  he  made  all  these  things  they  are  his 
to  do  with  as  he  wills. 

Not  only  in  this  second  account  of  creation  has  the  Creator 
become  identified  with  Jehovah,  but  the  purpose  of  creation 
is  clearly  defined.  There  is  not,  as  in  the  Hymn  of  Creation, 
a  development  from  lower  to  higher  forms  of  life;  here  the 
highest  comes  first,  creation  does  not  end  it  begins  with  man. 

Before  man  no  plant  of  the  field  was  yet  in  the  earth  and  no  herb 
of  the  field  had  yet  sprung  up,  for  Jehovah  Elohim  had  not  caused  it  to 
rain  upon  the  earth,  and  there  was  not  a  man  to  till  the  ground. 

Having  made  man,  Jehovah  then  made  of  his  rib  a  woman 
and  planted  a  garden  eastward  in  Eden  and  placed  the  man  in 
the  garden.  After  this  Jehovah  made  the  fishes  of  the  sea, 
the  fowls  of  the  air,  the  creeping  things,  the  beasts,  and  the 
cattle.  In  other  words,  in  this  second  account  the  world  is 
made  for  man  and  not  man  for  the  world. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  153 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  this  conception  of  creation, — which 
when  we  analyze  it,  seems  not  only  childish  but  grotesque, — 
has  held  in  thrall  the  minds  of  the  Western  world  for  nearly 
two  thousand  years.  For  centuries  it  was  not  so  much  as 
questioned,  and  to-day  it  is  held  in  millions  of  minds  as  the 
sufficient  explanation  of  the  existence  of  man  and  of  the 
world. 

The  reason  for  this  astounding  phenomenon  is  that  we  have 
in  this  conception  a  definite  answer  to  a  pressing  question. 
Men  are  as  children  asking  questions,  and  they  will  not, — 
indeed  they  cannot, — rest  until   their  question   is  answered. 
It  makes  no  difference  what  the  answer  is,  so  only  it  is  an 
fanswer.     /Therefore,  one  of  the  reasons  for  the  spreading  of  / 
'Judaism  in  the  world  was  this  definite  reply  to  the  cry  of  | 
man's  heart  for  some  explanation  of  his  origin  and  destiny.J 
Of  these  things  the  Aryan  religion  could  tell  him  nothing. 
Zeus  was  not  the  creator  of  the  world  nor  the  maker  of  man. 
The  gods  were  as  men,  subject  to  fate, — they  came  and  they 
went,  they  rose  and  they  fell,  and  men  saw  in  them  nothing 
but  a  repetition  on  a  larger  field  of  the  changes  of  this  mortal 
life.      It  was  this  void  in  the  understanding  that  was  filled 
by  the  declaration  that  Jehovah  made  man  for  his  own  pur- 
poses.     The  Hebrew  prophets  gave  to  Jehovah  a  character 
that  appealed  to  the  heart  and  the  conscience  of  man,  made 
God  a  friend  and  a  Saviour  as  well  as  a  Creator,  and  so  gave 
to  this  conception  a  dominion  that  still  endures  in  defiance  v> 
of  reason  and  knowledge. 

This  answer  is,  moreover,  of  all  answers  most  congenial  to 
the  nature  of  man.  It  placed  this  world  in  the  center  of 
the  universe,  the  sun  and  moon  and  the  stars  moving  over 
it  to  give  light  by  day  and  by  night;  it  made  of  man  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  the  life  process ;  it  made  of  the 
Jew  and  of  the  Christian  (taken  over  from  the  Jew)  the  cen- 
tral figure  of  history.  We  have  in  this  conception  of  creation 
the  tribal  consciousness  of  the  Jew,  making  out  of  that  con- 
sciousness a  world  in  which  a  Jew  can  live. 

The  Jew  traces  his  descent  in  the  main  life  from  Adam 
to  Abraham  and  from  Abraham  through  Israel  to  himself. 


154  THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

In  all  the  manifold  movements  of  the  world  he  sees  the  Prov- 
idence of  Jehovah,  working  for  his  preservation,  purification 
and  exaltation.  The  Jew  made  of  his  tribal  consciousness 
his  religion ;  out  of  it  he  fashioned  his  God,  with  the  help  of 
his  God  he  placed  himself  in  the  center  of  history,  and  he 
has  stayed  there.  His  God  has  become  the  God  and  his  re- 
ligious history  the  religious  history  of  the  Western  world. 
And  all  because  he  has  been  definite  in  his  statements  as  to 
God  and  himself. 

And  it  is  this,  as  it  appears  to  me,  conception  of  crea- 
tion,— to  the  exclusion  of  the  more  sublime  idea  of  the  Hymn 
of  Creation, — that  has  been  cherished  by  the  religious  thought 
of  the  Western  world.  It  inspired  the  genius  of  Dante  and 
Milton,  it  called  forth  the  profound  reasoning  of  Aquinas 
and  Scotus,  it  has  been  the  basis  of  theology  from  Paul  to 
Newman.  To  keep  this  world  in  its  place,  human  thinking 
has  been  condemned  as  evil  and  thousands  of  the  best  and 
bravest  have  been  exiled,  imprisoned,  beaten  with  rods,  and 
burned  at  the  stake. 

And  the  reason  for  all  this  is  that  this  conception  has  been 
a  protection  for  man  in  the  presence  of  the  infinites  and 
eternities  that  frighten  his  soul. 


BOOK  V 
THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  GODS 


CHAPTER   XXXI 
The  Degradation  of  The  Gods 

From  the  battle  of  Chceronea,  in  the  year  338  B.  C,  to  the 
battle  of  Pharsalus,  in  the  year  48  B.  C.,  the  world  of  which 
the  Mediterranean  Sea  is  the  center  was  in  process  of  cen- 
tralization. /The  battle  of  Chceronea  put  an  end  to  the  De- 
mocracy of  Greece,  the  battle  of  Pharsalus  finally  extinguished 
the  liberties  of  the  Republic  of  Rome.  J 

Alexander  of  Macedon,  the  son  of  Philip,  following  up 
the  victories  of  his  father,  destroyed  the  autonomy  of  the  city 
states  of  Greece, — subjecting  Athens,  Thebes,  and  Sparta  to 
the  dominion  of  Macedon, — and  then,  with  Greece  as  his 
background,  taking  in  Egypt  by  the  way,  entered  upon  his 
marvelous  career  of  conquest  in  Asia,  making  of  Western 
Asia  as  far  as  the  Indus  an  appanage  of  Europe. 

The  successors  of  Alexander, — the  Seleucide  in  Antioch, 
and  the  Ptolemies  in  Alexandria, — made  the  Greek  language, 
thought,  and  custom  native  to  Syria  and  Egypt.  Alexandria 
rivaled  Athens  as  a  seat  of  learning,  and  Antioch  was,  for  a 
time,  the  commercial  capitol  of  the  Grecian  world.  All  the 
lands  of  Western  Asia  and  Northeastern  Africa  became,  as 
Wales  is  to-day,  bilingual.  Greek  was  the  language  of  the 
court  and  the  school,  the  native  tongue  was  used  in  domestic 
intercourse  and  in  rustic  places.  The  unifying  influence  of 
Greek  culture  became  more  potent  after  the  Roman  conquest 
had  incorporated  the  Grecian  world  into  the  political  fabric 
of  the  Empire.  Politically  impotent,  in  pure  intellect  the 
Greeks  were  so  much  the  superior  of  the  Romans  that,  without 
intention  or  effort,  they  brought  the  Roman  mind  into  sub- 
jection to  Greek  culture. 

157 


158  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

After  the  Roman  conquest  the  whole  Mediterranean  world 
was  bilingual.  Greek  was  the  language  of  letters,  Latin  the 
language  of  law.  Every  one  who  was  at  all  in  the  world 
had  to  know  and  use  these  two  forms  of  speech.  The  Greeks 
were  everywhere  lecturing  and  teaching,  the  Romans  were 
everywhere  ruling  and  judging;  so  that  a  man  had  to  talk 
with  the  Greeks  and  plead  with  the  Romans, — if  he  expected 
to  know  anything,  or  do  anything,  or  be  anybody.  Greek 
thought  overarched  the  Mediterranean  world  as  does  the  sky ; 
Roman  law  lay  under  it  as  does  the  earth. 

When  Caesar,  on  the  field  of  Pharsalus,  put  an  end  to  the 
misrule  of  the  Roman  oligarchy  he  carried  the  principle  of 
centralization  to  a  point  beyond  which  it  could  not  go.  Caesar 
was  the  center  and  Caesar  was  the  circumference  of  the 
Roman  world. 

When  Caesar  died  he  left  to  his  grand-nephew  Octavianus 
Caesar,  a  boy  of  nineteen,  the  inheritance  of  the  world.  This 
youth,  the  most  consummate  politician  history  has  ever 
known,  completed  the  centralizing  work  of  his  great  uncle, 
and,  after  a  reign  of  more  than  half  a  century,  left  the  Roman 
world  so  crystallized  that  it  was  able  to  withstand  the  as- 
saults of  time  for  five  centuries. 

During  this  period  of  centralization  the  creative  energies 
of  the  human  soul,  being  exhausted,  ceased  to  operate,  and 
a  period  of  crystallization  set  in,  not  only  in  politics  but  in 
every  department  of  life.  The  great  men  of  the  Roman  world 
were  not  poets  nor  philosophers,  they  were  lawyers,  and  law- 
yers never  create,  they  only  codify.  The  Roman  people  had 
the  gift  of  organization  beyond  all  the  people  of  the  earth. 
They  could  not  originate,  but  they  could  arrange,  and  by 
the  perfection  of  their  arrangement  they  could  stifle  all  fur- 
ther origination.  The  Roman  must  have  everything  where 
he  can  put  his  hands  on  it  and  make  use  of  it.  There  must 
be  no  blurred  outlines  to  his  thought;  no  mysteries  beyond 
his  reach.  The  Roman  language  has  the  simplicity,  the  def- 
initeness,  of  the  Roman  people. 

The  Romans,  having  possessed  the  world,  proceeded  to 
organize  it;  and  to  that  end  evolved  the  Roman  law,  which 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  159 

remains  to  this  day  the  basic  law  of  the  Western  world. 
The  source  of  law  is  the  Caesar,  the  purpose  of  law  the 
maintenance  of  the  peace  and  prosperity  of  the  Empire.  This 
made  the  government  of  the  world  definite:  If  you  are  in 
doubt  appeal  to  Caesar.  When  Caesar  speaks,  the  matter  is 
closed.  Nothing  more  simple  can  be  thought  of! 

This  passion  for  definiteness  possessed  the  whole  world  at 
that  time.  Everything  must  be  set  in  order,  finished,  and 
done  with.  The  limits  of  the  world  were  closely  defined. 
The  Roman  world  consisted  of  that  portion  of  the  earth's 
surface  that  lay  round  about  the  middle  sea.  It  extended 
in  the  East  to  the  Indus,  in  the  South  to  the  desert,  in  the  West 
to  the  Ocean,  in  the  North  to  the  forests;  within  these  con- 
fines lay  the  civilized  world  as  it  was  known  to  the  Graeco- 
Roman  of  the  day.  To  the  East  were  people  whom  the 
Roman  did  not  consider  it  worth  while  to  conquer,  to  the 
North  were  the  hyperborean  forests,  the  haunt  of  wild  beasts 
and  still  wilder  men ;  to  the  South  were  the  trackless  sands ; 
to  the  West  the  trackless  waters,  to  the  Northwest  lay  Britain 
the  ultima  Thule  of  the  Roman  world.  What  lay  beyond 
the  western  waters  and  below  the  southern  sands  the  Roman 
did  not  know,  nor  did  he  care  to  know.  The  Roman  mind 
is  so  constituted  that  it  does  not  care  for  what  it  does  not 
know.  It  is,  as  a  mind,  seldom  or  never  haunted  by  the 
unknown. 

The  earth  of  the  Roman  was  a  half  sphere,  hollow  under- 
neath, resting  on  pillars.  If  one  went  too  far  to  the  east  or 
too  far  to  the  west,  one  would  fall  off,  so  one  would  better 
stay  at  home  than  to  try  to  wander  to  the  confines  of  the 
earth.  The  sky  was  considered  to  be  a  solid  sphere  in  which 
the  heavenly  bodies  were  placed  as  a  jeweler  places  stones  in 
a  setting.  This  sphere  was  manifold, — crystals  within  crys- 
tals moving  in  cycles  and  epicycles  over  the  earth.  The  sun 
made  its  circuit  through  the  signs  of  the  zodiac  once  a  year. 
These  motions  of  the  sun  and  the  planets  were  explained  with 
great  minuteness  by  the  astronomers  of  the  day.  If  one 
could  not  understand  the  astronomers,  that  was  one's  own 


160        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

fault  and  one  for  one's  safety  had  best  leave  the  stars  alone 
and  devote  his  attention  to  women, — they  were  less  dan- 
gerous. 

The  languages,  Greek  and  Roman,  were  finished  and  in 
the  keeping  of  the  grammarians.  This  age  had  no  Homers, 
but  it  did  have  a  Quintilian.  Thought  was  in  bondage  to 
logic  and  must  not  presume  to  use  any  other  method  than 
that  laid  down. 

Aristotle  was  the  supreme  authority  in  the  world  of 
thought;  Ptolemy  in  that  of  astronomy.  There  was  no  such 
thing  as  geology  or  biology  known  to  the  Graeco-Roman  mind. 
The  historian  was  an  analyst,  without  critical  faculty  to  dis- 
tinguish myth  and  legend  from  sober  fact,  and  so,  to  our  great 
advantage,  preserved  for  us  the  tales  of  shepherds  as  of 
equal  value  with  the  speeches  of  statesmen. 

Such  was  the  Graeco-Roman  world  in  the  days  of  its  crys- 
tallization,— perfect  as  a  crystal  and  dead  as  a  crystal.  There 
was  in  that  world  no  place  for  the  gods;  Divus  Caesar,  the 
God  of  the  Organization,  was  equal  to  the  task  of  managing 
the  organization,  and  the  management  of  the  organization  was 
all  that  the  situation  called  for.  The  Graeco-Roman  civiliz- 
ation was  unimaginative,  uninspired,  unoriginal.  Its  poets 
were  dead,  its  philosophers  were  dead,  its  thinkers  were  dead, 
its  gods  were  dead,  and  it  lived  on  the  imagination,  the  ra- 
tiocination, and  the  emotion  that  had  come  down  to  it  from 
a  greater  and  a  living  past. 

The  household  gods  still  received  their  libations,  but  the 
household  itself  was  no  longer  sacred,  the  Pater-familias  was 
a  man-about-town  and  the  Mater-familias  a  woman  of  pleas- 
ure. Hosts  of  slaves  swarmed  in  and  out  of  the  houses, 
hardly  known  to  and  hardly  knowing  their  masters.  The  old 
Italio-Greek  gods  were  worshipped  and  laughed  at  in  turn. 
The  religion  of  the  city  was  gone  with  the  freedom  of  the  city, 
and  the  gods  of  the  cities  were  pensioners  upon  the  bounty 
of  Divus  Caesar.  These  gods  might  be  and  were  the  official 
gods  of  the  State,  so  long  as  they  did  not  interfere  directly 
or  indirectly  with  the  affairs  of  the  State ;  the  worship  of  them 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        161 

was  encouraged  as  necessary  to  the  safety  of  the  state, — and 
if  they  could  do  nothing  else,  they  could  keep  the  people  quiet. 
Gods  from  all  the  world  came  flocking  to  Rome  to  share 
in  the  benefits  of  Imperial  protection  and  Imperial  bounty. 
Mithra  from  Persia  and  Isis  from  Egypt  were  more  popular 
than  either  Jupiter  or  Juno, — the  one,  Mithra,  with  the  sol- 
diers, and  the  other,  with  the  women  of  fashion.  Vulgarity 
was  the  keynote  of  the  religion  of  the  day.  The  proselyte 
of  Mithra  stood  under  a  butchered  bull  and  bathed  himself  in 
its  blood.  A  devotee  of  Isis  (a  wealthy  lady)  was  easily  per- 
suaded to  occupy  the  couch  of  the  goddess,  while  in  the  dark- 
ness some  lusty  priest  played, — to  her  satisfaction, — the  part 
of  the  god  Anubis.  Love  philters  and  charms,  blest  of  Venus, 
were  sold  on  the  corners  of  the  street;  fakirs  with  drums 
preached  salvation  to  gaping  crowds ;  gods  were  a  cheap  and 
a  plenty ;  one  could  buy  a  god  for  an  as  *  and  sell  a  god  for  an 
as  on  any  day  in  the  week  in  the  cities  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

Jehovah,  the  God  of  the  Bene-Israel,  had  fallen  into  the 
same  state  of  degradation.  The  means  he  had  devised  to 
keep  his  name  alive  after  the  loss  of  his  city  had  been  his 
temporary  undoing.  As  the  God  of  the  Book  he  was  subject 
to  the  dangers  of  the  book.  He  was  liable  to  misinterpreta- 
tion, to  misunderstanding,  to  the  loss  of  personality  and  vit- 
ality. He  was  no  longer  a  living  god,  but  a  written  god.  If 
one  wanted  to  find  Jehovah  in  those  days  of  degradation,  one 
did  not  seek  him  with  Abraham  in  the  defiles  of  Lebanon; 
nor  wrestle  with  him  in  the  night,  as  did  Jacob  at  Jabbok; 
nor  turn  aside  to  see  him,  as  Moses  did  at  the  burning  bush ; 
one  went,  instead,  to  the  synagogue,  not  to  find  Jehovah,  but 
to  hear  tell  of  him ;  not  to  listen  to  his  voice,  but 
to  hear  what  some  prophet  of  old  had  said  about  him.  In 
those  days  there  was  no  open  vision.  God  was  not  a  living 
person,  he  was  a  recorded  memory.  He  was  not  a  free  god 
going  before  his  people;  he  was  a  god  bound  hand  and  foot 
in  the  meshes  of  the  law  of  his  own  making.  Little  laws 
and  big  laws  held  him  fast.  When  one  went  to  the  syn- 

1  A  small  Roman  coin. 


162        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

agogue  one  did  not  even  hear  of  God  Jehovah,  one  only  heard 
graybeard  scribe  wrangling  with  graybeard  scribe  as  to  which 
was  the  great  commandment  of  the  law.  Jehovah  was  at 
the  mercy  of  the  lawyers  who  used  him  to  exploit  the  people. 
Poor  Jehovah !  what  he  had  written  he  had  written,  and  his 
own  word  was  used  against  him.  He  was  the  god  of  the 
Jew,  and  no  Gentile  need  apply.  He  was  coming,  accord- 
ing to  the  book,  to  put  the  Gentile  in  a  pit  and  the  Jew  on  a 
throne.  The  Gentile,  hearing  this,  went  away  in  a  rage,  and 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  Jehovah. 

So  it  was  with  all  the  gods :  fast  bound  to  their  past  they 
could  give  no  help  to  the  present  and  no  hope  to  the  future. 
They  had  to  stand  by  and  see  the  people  become  the  prey 
of  Divus  Caesar  and  his  organization. 

After  the  death  and  deification  of  Augustus  Caesar,  Divus 
Caesar  was  incarnate  in  the  person  of  Tiberius  Claudius, — 
the  son  of  Nero  and  Livia, — a  world-weary,  embittered 
man,  whose  life  had  been  outraged  from  the  moment  of  his 
conception  to  the  day  of  his  accession  to  imperial  power. 
His  mother  was  divorced  from  his  father  at  the  command  of 
Augustus  to  become  the  wife  of  Augustus. 

Tiberius  in  his  youth  was  hated  by  all  the  Julian  family, 
into  which  by  his  mother's  marriage  he  was  incorporated;  in 
his  manhood  was  compelled  to  divorce  his  own  beloved  wife, 
Agrippina,  and  marry  the  Emperor's  wanton  daughter, 
Julia ;  was  exiled  from  Rome,  finding  in  his  exile  release  from 
sorrow;  and,  coming  to  the  throne  in  middle  age,  found  him- 
self the  center  of  continual  conspiracy.  Forced  to  put  men 
to  death  whom  he  would  gladly  have  let  live,  in  desperation 
he  renounced  the  world,  and  committing  the  government  to 
his  freedman  Sejanus,  Tiberius  retired  to  his  villa  at  Capri, 
to  practice  (according  to  the  libidinous  gossip  of  Rome)  the 
most  shameful  debaucheries;  to  brood  (according  to  better 
authority)  over  the  misery  of  life.  Poor,  great,  beautiful, 
sorrowful,  Tiberius  Claudius  Nero-Caesar,  and  Augustus, — 
Imperator  and  God !  Never  was  there  a  god  more  miserable 
than  this  same  Tiberius  Claudius  Nero. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  163 

After  him  came  the  mad  wretch  Caligula;  to  be  succeeded 
by  the  stupid  Claudius,  and  after  him  the  buffoon  Nero. 
Thus  that  old  world  went  dancing  down  the  ways  of  death 
to  the  hell  that  was  waiting  for  it.  Insanity  at  the  top  and 
leprosy  at  the  bottom !  It  was  a  sick,  mad  world,  with  not 
a  god  in  sight  to  help  it. 


BOOK  VI 
THE  GOD  CHRISTUS 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

A  New  God  Conies  to  Rome 

On  the  night  of  the  18th  of  July,  in  the  year  64  A.D.,  a  fire 
started  in  the  wooden  booth  of  the  Circus  Maximus  in  the 
City  of  Rome,  which,  after  raging  for  over  a  week,  left  the 
greater  part  of  the  city  in  ashes  and  the  mass  of  the  people 
homeless  and  starving.  The  origin  of  this  fire  was  by  pop- 
ular rumor  ascribed  to  the  Emperor  Nero.  It  was  said  that 
he  had  caused  the  city  to  be  set  on  fire  that  he  might  ex- 
perience the  sensations  of  Priam  at  the  burning  of  Troy. 
Whether  true  or  false,  this  rumor  occasioned  the  Emperor 
distress  and  alarm.  Egoist  that  he  was,  he  could  not  help 
knowing  that  he  was  hated  and  despised  as  no  man  was  ever 
before  hated  and  despised.  A  matricide  and  an  adulterer, 
he  had  offended  the  moral  sense  even  of  the  corrupt  society 
of  the  imperial  city;  a  buffoon, — taking  to  the  stage  and 
playing  a  part  in  the  company  of  slaves, — he  had  out- 
raged the  dignity  of  the  Empire ;  scorned  by  the  great,  held 
in  horror  by  the  low,  this  last  of  the  Julian  Claudian  family 
felt  the  chill  of  approaching  doom.  The  fire  in  Rome, 
whether  of  his  making  or  not,  inflamed  the  people  against 
him  to  a  hotter  indignation,  and  the  saying  went  abroad  that 
"Nero  fiddled  while  Rome  burned." 

To  divert  suspicion  from  himself,  Nero  accused  a  certain 
obscure  sect  of  people,  called  "Christians,"  of  having  started 
the  fire.  Properly  to  punish  these  wretches,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  amuse  the  people,  the  Emperor  Nero  made  a  revei 
in  his  gardens,  to  which  all  Rome  was  made  welcome,  and  he 
caused  these  the  accused  Christians  to  be  covered  with  tar, 
tied  to  pillars,  and  burned  as  torches  to  light  the  revels.  As 
he  turned  in  and  out  among  the  torches,  driving  his  chariots, 

167 


168        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

he  and  all  the  people  heard,  rising  above  the  roaring  of  the 
flames,  a  mad,  glad  cry  from  the  lips  of  tortured  dying  men 
and  women :  "Christianus  sum!" — "I  am  a  Christian !"  Thus, 
did  Emperor  and  people  learn  that  night  that  a  new  god 
had  come  to  Rome. 

This  god  was  from  the  first  most  obnoxious  to  the  rulers 
of  the  city.  They  despised  him  as  a  low-born  god,  and 
hated  and  feared  him  because  he  stirred  up  the  dregs  of  the 
people  to  discontent  and  sedition.  The  Caesar  could  find 
no  place  in  his  Pantheon  for  this  god,  for  none  of  the  other 
gods  would  keep  company  with  him,  nor  would  he  associate 
with  them.  They  were  the  gods  of  the  ruling  leisure  class, 
he  was  the  god  of  the  oppressed  working  class ;  they  were  the 
gods  of  the  past,  he  was  the  god  of  the  future.  Between  this 
new  god  and  the  old  gods  there  was  an  irrepressible  conflict. 
They  were  the  gods  of  the  physical,  he  the  god  of  the  moral 
order, 

The  followers  of  this  god  were  the  offscouring  of  the 
earth, — broken  slaves,  thieves,  and  harlots, — persons  for 
whom  the  better  classes  had  a  loathing  and  a  horror  such 
as  men  have  for  vermin.  This  attitude  of  the  educated  rul- 
ing class  toward  this  new  god  and  his  people,  is  expressed  by 
Cornelius  Tacitus,  one  of  the  keenest  minds  of  his  or  any 
age.  Writing  in  the  reign  of  Trajan  of  the  doings  of  Nero, 
for  whom  his  hatred  and  horror  were  unbounded,  in  speaking 
of  the  great  fire  he  says : 

"Nero  fastened  the  guilt  [of  the  fire]  and  inflicted  the 
most  exquisite  tortures  on  a  class  hated  for  their  abomina- 
tions, called  Christians  by  the  populace.  Christus,  from 
whom  the  name  had  its  origin,  suffered  the  extreme  penalty 
during  the  reign  of  Tiberius  at  the  hands  of  one  of  our  pro- 
curators, Pontius  Pilate,  and  a  most  mischievous  supersti- 
tion, thus  checked  for  the  moment,  broke  out  again  not  only 
in  Judea,  the  first  source  of  the  evil,  but  even  in  Rome,  where 
all  things  hideous  and  shameful  from  every  part  of  the  world 
find  their  center  and  become  popular.  Accordingly  an  arrest 
was  first  made  of  all  who  pleaded  guilty;  then  upon  their 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  169 

information  an  immense  multitude  was  convicted,  not  so 
much  of  the  crime  of  firing  the  city  as  of  hatred  against  man- 
kind. Covered  with  skins  of  beasts  they  were  torn  by  dogs 
and  perished,  or  were  nailed  to  crosses,  or  were  doomed  to 
flames  and  burnt  to  serve  as  nightly  illumination,  when  day- 
light had  expired. 

Nero  offered  his  garden  for  the  spectacle,  and  was  ex- 
hibiting a  show  in  the  circus,  while  he  mingled  with  the 
people  in  the  dress  of  a  charioteer  or  stood  aloft  in  a  car. 
Hence,  even  for  criminals  who  deserved  extreme  and  exem- 
plary punishment,  there  arose  a  feeling  of  compassion;  for 
it  was  not,  as  it  seemed,  for  the  public  good,  but  to  glut 
one  man's  cruelty  that  they  were  being  destroyed." 

So  wrote  the  most  acute  mind  of  his  generation  of  the  god 
and  the  people  of  the  coming  age, — who  were  to  give  their 
name  to  an  era  and  transform  the  Roman  world  into  their 
likeness.  A  warning  to  all  writers  of  all  ages  not  to  be 
hasty  in  judgment  nor  to  despise  the  lowest  of  the  people. 

It  is  not  strange  that  Tacitus  and  the  men  of  his  class 
should  have  so  misjudged  this  god  Christus  and  his  religion. 
The  origin  of  this  god  was  obscure,  and,  from  their  point 
of  view,  despicable.  He  was  a  working-man  and  a  Jew, — 
a  member  of  a  degraded  class  and  the  offspring  of  a  des- 
pised race.  In  fact,  we  ourselves,  had  we  known  of  Christus 
no  more  than  Tacitus  knew,  should  never  have  thought  of 
him  as  a  god,  but  only,  at  the  best,  as  a  foolish  man,  one 
of  that  kind  of  men  whom  Napoleon  despised  and  called 
ideologists, — men  who  think  to  rule  the  world  through  the 
medium  of  ideas.  If  we  had  been  of  the  ruling  class  we 
would  have  said  of  this  man  that  he  was  not  only  foolish 
but  wicked, — a  demagogue,  an  insane  egoist,  stirring  up  the 
people  to  hope  for  that  which  could  never  be ;  deluding  and 
deluded,  thinking  himself  a  god  while  he  was  in  reality  a 
criminal. 

1  "Annals   of   Tacitus,"  A.   F.   Church,   W.   J.   Brodribb:   Macmillan   & 
Co. ;   London, 


170  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

There  was  nothing  in  the  origin  of  this  man  or  in  his  early 
history  that  gave  the  least  indication  that  he  would  attain 
to  the  rank  of  the  greater  gods.  He  was  the  son  of  a  carpenter, 
a  native  of  the  obscure  town  of  Nazareth,  in  upper  Galilee, 
a  town  out  of  which  it  was  said  nothing  good  could  come. 
He  never  went,  to  our  knowledge,  out  of  that  countryside  in 
the  which  he  was  born,  except  to  go  down  when  he  was 
twelve  years  old  to  the  city  of  Jerusalem,  as  was  the  custom 
of  his  people,  and  again  at  the  end  of  his  life.  He  seems  to 
have  been  without  ambition  to  be  other  than  he  was  and 
spent  the  early  years  of  his  manhood  contentedly  working 
at  his  trade  as  a  carpenter.  He  secured  his  education  at  the 
school  of  the  synagogue,  as  did  the  other  Jewish  boys  in  his 
village.  During  his  youth  and  early  manhood  he  did  not 
give  any  promise  of  his  future  greatness.  We  can  hardly 
conjecture  what  was  going  on  in  that  soul  that  was  later  to 
flame  out  with  the  consuming  fires  of  righteous  anger,  and 
give  forth  burning  words  that  were,  like  brands  blown  by 
the  winds,  to  carry  the  fire  of  this  soul  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth. 

This  young  man  was  known  to  his  neighbors  as  Joshua 
ben  Joseph.  When  he  comes  to  the  notice  of  history  his 
father  was,  probably,  dead,  since  no  mention  is  made  of 
Joseph  in  connection  with  the  active  life  of  his  illustrious 
son,  Joshua  (or,  as  he  came  to  be  known  to  the  English- 
speaking  world,  Jesus)  was  living  unmarried  with  his  mother, 
— whose  name  was  Miriam,  or  Mary, — and  his  brothers  and 
sisters  in  their  home  in  'Nazareth  of  Galilee,  when  an  event 
occurred  in  his  life  that  carried  him  out  of  his  obscurity  into 
his  eternal  fame, — an  event  that  has  given  to  this  Nazarene 
carpenter  the  rank  of  an  immortal  god. 

When  he  was  about  thirty  years  old  there  came  a  report 
to  Nazareth  of  a  certain  Yohanan,  or  John,  who  was  preach- 
ing in  the  Wilderness  of  Judea,  proclaiming  the  approach  of 
that  kingdom  of  God,  which  was  the  hope  and  expectation 
of  all  the  people  of  the  Jews.  This  John  seemed  to  those 
who  heard  him  as  one  of  the  old  prophets.  Like  Elijah  the 
Tishbite,  he  came  out  of  obscurity,  to  upbraid  the  wickedness 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS         171 

of  the  rulers  of  his  people.  Herod  the  King,  the  princes, 
and  the  priests  came  under  the  lash  of  his  scathing  denunci- 
ation ;  to  the  people  he  preached  repentance  and  deliverance 
to  come.  Jerusalem  and  Judea  and  Samaria  and  the  region 
round  about  heard  of  the  fame  of  this  preacher  in  the  Wilder- 
ness, and  the  people  went  out  in  crowds  to  hear  him.  He 
was  the  man  of  the  hour. 

In  an  early  and  now  forgotten  history  of  Jesus  the  son  of 
Joseph  of  Nazareth,  we  are  told  that  Mary,  the  mother  of 
Jesus,  said  to  him  and  to  his  brothers: 

"Come,  let  us  go  and  hear  this  preacher  of  whom  every 
one  is  talking." 

Jesus  said: 

"What  does  he  preach?" 

Mary  answered: 

"He  preaches  repentance  from  sin  and  righteousness  toward 
God." 

Jesus  turned  back  to  his  bench,  saying: 

"Why  should  I  go  to  hear  him?  I  am  not  a  sinner,  that 
I  should  repent." 

And  Mary  and  his  brothers  went  their  way.  Then  Jesus 
reflected  and  said  to  himself:  It  may  be  a  sin  for  me  not  to 
go  and  hear  this  man.  If  this  word  is  from  God  it  will  surely 
do  me  good,  if  not,  it  can  do  me  no  harm.  Then  Jesus  made 
haste  and  followed  his  mother  and  his  brothers  and  came  to 
where  John  was  preaching  in  the  wilderness  of  Judea.1 

Upon  what  little  hinges  do  the  great  doors  of  des- 
tiny turn !  How  insignificant  are  beginnings !  A  band  of 
shepherds  seek  security  on  a  hilltop  by  the  Tiber,  and  there 
follows  the  Empire  of  Rome.  Another  band  of  shepherds 
faint  in  the  Desert  of  Zin,  and  their  cry  for  deliverance  is  the 
birthcry  of  an  universal  religion.  A  young  man  moved  by 
compunction  follows  his  mother  and  his  brothers  to  listen 
to  a  preacher  in  the  wilderness,  and  we  have  a  new  era. 
Who  can  tell  to-day  from  what  corner  of  the  sky  the  little 

1  The  Gospel  to  the  Hebrews. 


172 

cloud  is  rising  that  to-morrow  will  darken  the  whole  heavens? 
Jesus,  as  he  walked  from  Nazareth  to  the  Wilderness  of 
Judea,  did  not  know  that  the  road  he  was  following  would 
lead  him  to  the  death  of  a  criminal  and  to  the  throne  of  a 
god. 

When  he  came  into  the  presence  of  that  preacher  he  heard 
words  that  stirred  the  depths  of  his  soul  as  the  tempest  stirs 
the  deeps  of  the  sea.  Great  waves  of  thought  and  feeling 
swept  over  him  and  carried  him  away  from  his  quiet  moor- 
ings out  into  the  stress  and  storm  of  a  life  that  ended  in  his 
death  on  a  cross.  Between  his  baptism  by  John  and  his 
death  on  Calvary  this  young  man  had  been  revealed  to  him- 
self and  the  world  as  the  greatest  spiritual  genius  the  race 
of  men  had  ever  known.  So  great  was  he  that  he  seemed  to 
himself  and  to  those  nearest  him  to  be  none  other  than  the 
Christ,  the  Son  of  the  Living  God. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 
Jesus  and  the  Resurrection 

When  Paul  was  preaching  in  the  Market  Place  of  Athens, 
he  seemed  to  those  who  heard  him  to  be  a  "setter  forth  of 
strange  gods,"  because  he  preached  "Jesus  and  the  Resur- 
rection." Paul  was  primarily  the  Apostle  of  the  Resurrection. 
He  did  not  know  Jesus  in  the  flesh.  In  all  his  writings  he 
makes  no  reference  to  any  incident  in  the  earthly  life  of  the 
Master ;  what  the  Lord  did  and  said  as  he  walked  and  talked 
with  his  disciples  in  Galilee  did  not  interest  Paul;  the  career 
of  Jesus  began  for  him  after  his  death.  /\\.  was  the  risen 
Lord  that  Paul  preached ;  it  is  the  risen  Lord  who  for  twenty 
centuries  has  been  worshipped  as  a  God  by  the  Christian 
church.  If  Christ  be  not  risen,  then  we  are  told  that  all 
Christian  faith  is  vain. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  173 

It  is  the  waning  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  as  a 
fact  in  the  physical  universe  that  is  bringing  about  the  dis- 
solution of  the  Christian  religion.  It  is  impossible  for  a 
mind  trained  in  the  modern  scientific  method  to  accept  the 
popular  conception  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  His  appear- 
ances after  his  death  and  his  bodily  ascension  into  the  sky  are 
in  such  contradiction  to  physical  law,  so  foreign  to  all  human 
experience,  that  the  modern  mind  refuses  all  consideration  to 
these  phenomena, — phenomena  that  for  the  trained  intelli- 
gence have  no  validity  in  the  outward  physical  world  of  force 
and  matter,  belonging  rather  to  the  region  of  the  psychic. 
v~~The  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  not  a  problem  in  physics,  it 
if 'is  a  problem  in  psychology. 

In  undertaking  the  investigation  of  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus  Christ  as  a  problem  in  psychology,  I  am  conscious  of 
the  difficulty,  the  danger,  and  the  delicacy  of  my  adventure. 
I  am  reopening  that  which,  for  the  majority  of  men  and 
women,  is  a  closed  question.  Whether  one  be  a  believer  or 
a  disbeliever  in  the  resurrection  as  an  event  in  outward  hu- 
man history,  one  is  apt  to  think  that  one  knows  all  that  can 
be  known  in  regard  to  it.  Further  comment  is  to  the  be- 
liever irreverent,  to  the  disbeliever  useless.  The  subject  is 
so  involved  with  religious  emotions  that  all  discussion  is 
dangerous.  The  writer  must  proceed  with  great  delicacy  lest 
he  offend  the  convictions  and  wound  the  sensibilities  of  his 
readers  and  so  defeat  the  purpose  of  his  writing.  But  in 
spite  of  the  difficulty,  the  danger  and  the  delicacy,  the  writer 
goes  forward  in  the  full  assurance  that  by  means  of  scientific 
psychology  many, — if  not  all, — the  phenomena  of  the  resur- 
rection may  be  explained,  its  perplexities  unraveled,  and  this 
vastly  important  event  removed  from  its  present  isolation  and 
given  its  place  in  the  natural  order  of  the  universe. 

Before  proceeding  further  with  our  enterprise,  it  is  neces- 
sary for  us  to  know  that  we  are  dealing  with  a  resurrection 
and  not  with  a  resuscitation.  The  theory  advanced  by  some 
that  the  phenomena  of  the  resurrection  can  be  accounted  for 
on  the  supposition  that  Jesus  was  not  dead  when  his  body 
was  taken  down  from  the  cross  and  placed  in  the  tomb;  that 


174  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

he  was  only  in  a  swoon  from  which  he  revived  and  came 
forth  from  the  sepulchre  alive;  that  he  retired  to  some  secret 
place  where  he  was  visited  from  time  to  time  by  his  disciples, 
who  went  forth  from  this  living  presence  to  preach  the  death, 
the  resurrection,  and  the  second  coming  of  Jesus  as  the  sav- 
ing power  of  a  religion  that  converted  a  Western  world.  This 
theory  substitutes  a  base  for  a  divine  miracle,  and  makes 
fraud  the  handmaid  of  truth. 

But  the  universe  is  not  so  ordered.  So  futile  a  cause  could 
never  produce  such  consequence.  If  Jesus  had  not  died  on 
the  cross,  his  after  life  would  have  been  an  anti-climax,  fruit- 
ful of  no  results.  These  a  priori  arguments  are  sustained  by 
the  fact  that  there  is  no  evidence  of  any  kind  to  uphold  the 
theory  of  resuscitation.  The  creed  of  Christendom  is  divinely 
true  in  affirming  that  Jesus  died  and  rose  again  from  the 
dead.  He  was  to  the  church  a  resurrected  and  not  a  resusci- 
tated personality. 

Having  dismissed  as  without  warrant,  the  supposition  of 
a  resuscitation,  we  must  now  ask  ourselves  what  a  resur- 
rection is  and  how  it  differs  from  a  resuscitation.  But  when 
we  ask  the  question:  What  is  a  resurrection?  we  are  met 
by  the  almost  overwhelming  difficulty  that,  according  to 
current  belief,  there  never  in  all  the  experience  of  mankind 
has  been  but  one  resurrection  from  the  dead.  Of  the  bil- 
lions and  billions  of  human  beings  who  have  lived  and  died, 
only  one  has  come  back  again  from  the  dead  and  showed 
himself  alive  to  his  friends.  The  resurrection  of  Jesus  is 
unique.  It  is  not  to  be  compared  to  the  supposed  manifes- 
tations of  departed  souls  by  means  of  spiritual  mediums. 
These  manifestations,  while  they  may  indicate  the  soul's  sur- 
vival of  death,  have  no  relation  that  we  can  see  to  human 
life.  The  resurrection  of  Jesus,  as  we  shall  learn,  is  one  of 
the  mightiest  events  of  human  history.  It  is  the  efficient  cause 
of  Christendom  and  all  that  Christendom  means  to  mankind. 

The  Greek  word  anastdsis,  and  the  Latin  word  resurrectus 
mean  "standing  up," — rising  from  the  supine  to  the  erect 
position ;  as  when  a  man  gets  out  of  his  bed  onto  his  feet 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  175 

and,  in  the  fullness  of  resumed  strength,  stands  up  to  face 
the  issues  of  life.  Resuscitation  implies  feebleness ;  resur- 
rection, power. 

Bearing  this  meaning  in  mind,  we  proceed  to  inquire  as 
to  the  mode  of  Jesus'  resurrection,  in  what  way  he,  after  his 
death,  rose  again  from  the  dead,  and  standing  up,  became 
more  powerful  in  death  than  he  had  ever  been  in  life.  And 
this  inquiry  is  purely  historical,  we  cannot  deal  with  it  apart 
from  the  facts  in  the  case.  We  must  analyze  the  evidence, — 
must  follow  the  vast  stream  of  Christian  thought  and  feeling, 
in  which  the  belief  in  the  resurrection  is  carried,  to  its  sources 
in  the  hills  of  antiquity. 


. 

CHAPTER  XXXIV 


The   Magdalene  Tradition 

The  earliest  account  of  the  resurrection  (save  one)  that 
has  come  down  to  us  is  contained  in  a  short  narrative  of  the 
life  of  Jesus  known  to  us  as  the  Gospel  according  to  Mark. 
In  this  account,  we  are  told  that  three  women, — Mary  Mag- 
dalene, Mary  the  mother  of  James,  and  Salome, — went  to 
the  sepulchre  of  Jesus  very  early  on  the  Sunday  morning 
following  his  crucifixion  and  death,  which  occurred  on  Fri- 
day, to  complete  the  ritual  of  anointing  his  body,  which  the 
haste  of  his  burial  had  prevented  on  the  day  of  his  entomb- 
ment. When  they  come  to  the  sepulchre  they  find,  to  their 
relief  and  their  astonishment,  that  the  great  stone  that  blocks 
the  door  of  the  tomb  is  rolled  away.  Entering  the  tomb 
they  find  it  empty  of  the  body  of  Jesus,  but  they  see  a  young 
man  sitting  on  the  right  side  clothed  in  a  long  white  gar- 
ment, and  they  were  affrighted.  And  the  young  man  said 
unto  them: 


176        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

"Be  not  affrighted.  'Ye  seek  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  which  was 
crucified ;  he  is  risen ;  he  is  not  here :  behold  the  place  where 
they  laid  him.  But  go  your  way,  tell  his  disciples  and  Peter 
that  he  goeth  before  you  into  Galilee:  there  shall  ye  see  him 
as  he  said  unto  you.'  And  they  went  out  quickly  and  fled 
from  the  sepulchre ;  for  they  trembled  and  were  amazed : 
neither  said  they  anything  to  any  man  for  they  were  afraid." 

And  that  is  all.  In  the  more  ancient  manuscripts  the  Gos- 
pel of  Mark  end  with  these  words: 

xat  ouSevt  ouSev  etxov  e^o^oOvTO  yap 

The  last  twelve  verses  of  the  Gospel  as  found  in  our  Eng- 
lish version  are  not  genuine. 

So  this  little  pool  of  woman's  fears  and  woman's  tears  is 
the  apparent  source  of  that  mighty  stream  of  religious 
thought,  feeling,  and  action  which  we  are  exploring. 

This  Gospel  is  by  many  years  the  earliest  of  the  Gospel 
histories,  and  in  it  is  the  deposit  of  the  popular  thought  and 
feeling  of  the  newborn  Christian  community.  Only  one  ac- 
count of  the  resurrection  is  earlier  than  this  of  Mark. 

As  we  follow  the  stream  of  tradition  downward,  we  see, 
as  Matthew  Arnold  says,  "A  legend  growing  under  our  eyes." 
The  account  of  the  resurrection  in  the  Gospel  of  Matthew  is 
based  upon  the  story  of  Mark.  The  women  go  to  the  sepul- 
chre early  Sunday  morning;  they  see  the  angel,  who  repeats 
the  words  and  the  commands  of  the  angel  of  Mark:  "Go 
quickly  and  tell  his  disciples  that  he  is  risen  from  the  dead ; 
and,  behold,  he  goeth  before  you  into  Galilee ;  there  shall  ye 
see  him :  lo,  I  have  told  you." 

The  legendary  accretions  of  this  Gospel  tell  of  the  earth- 
quake that  rolls  away  the  stone  from  the  door  of  the  sepul- 
chre ;  of  the  Roman  soldiers,  keepers  of  the  tomb,  who  flee  in 
fright  to  the  Pharisees  with  news  of  the  resurrection  and  are 
bribed  into  silence ;  this  legend  also  has  the  women  see  Jesus 
himself  in  the  garden,  who  repeats  to  them  the  command  of 
the  angel:  "Go  tell  my  brethren  that  they  go  into  Galilee; 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS         177 

there  shall  they  see  me."  In  obedience  to  this  direction  of 
the  angel,  Matthew  tells  us  that  the  eleven  apostles  went 
into  Galilee  to  a  certain  mountain  which  Jesus  had  appointed. 
There  Jesus  appeared  to  them,  gave  them  general  directions 
as  to  the  conversion  of  the  world  and  then  disappeared.  There 
was  no  formal  ascension,  only  an  appearance  and  a  disap- 
pearance. Matthew's  Gospel  is  of  Hebraistic  origin,  and  its 
purpose  is  to  preserve  the  teachings  rather  than  to  tell  the 
life  of  Jesus. 

When  we  pass  from  the  Gospels  of  Mark  and  Matthew 
into  the  Gospel  of  Luke,  we  find  ourselves  in  an  entirely 
different  region  of  thought  and  feeling.  The  Christian  move- 
ment is  slowly  losing  its  purely  Hebraistic  character, — it  is 
in  process  of  Hellenization.  The  writer  of  this  Gospel  is 
Grecian  and  a  scholar.  The  introduction  to  the  Gospel  is  in 
the  purest  Attic  style,  worthy  of  the  age  of  Pericles.  This 
writer  is  a  poet  of  the  first  rank,  and  uses  a  poet's  license 
freely  in  his  composition ;  he  belongs  to  the  second  genera- 
tion of  Christians  and  frankly  bases  his  narrative  not  upon 
observation  but  upon  hearsay. 

When  this  Gospel  was  written  Christianity  was  already 
forgetting  its  Galilean  origin ;  its  home  was  Jerusalem,  from 
whence  it  was  going  forth  to  the  conquest  of  the  world. 
Luke's  account  of  the  resurrection  is  controlled  by  the  Jeru- 
salem tradition.  He  follows  the  garden  story  of  Mark  and 
Matthew.  But  the  angel,  in  his  account,  does  not  give  the 
command  to  the  women  to  go  and  tell  the  disciples  to  go 
into  Galilee,  where  they  shall  see  the  Lord ;  but  he  bases 
the  resurrection  on  a  saying  of  Jesus  made  in  Galilee.  Speak- 
ing of  Jesus  the  angel  says :  "He  is  not  here,  he  is  risen ;  re- 
member how  he  spake  unto  you  when  he  was  yet  in  Galilee, 
saying  the  Son  of  man  must  be  delivered  into  the  hands  of 
sinful  men  and  be  crucified  and  slain,  and  the  third  day  rise 
again,  and  they  remembered  the  words."  \  It  is  evident  that 
we  have  here  not  the  words  of  the  angel  but  the  afterthought 
of  the  church. 

In  Luke's  account  the  women  do  not  see  Jesus  in  the 
garden, — they  see  only  the  angels,  of  which  there  are  two. 


178  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

They  hurry  from  the  tomb  to  the  city  and  tell  the  assembled 
disciples  what  they  have  seen  and  heard.  The  disciples  give 
no  credence  to  the  words  of  the  women;  only  Peter  goes  to 
the  sepulchre  and  sees  the  empty  tomb. 

In  the  afternoon  of  that  day  Jesus  falls  in  with  certain 
disciples,  who  are  walking  from  Jerusalem  to  Emmaus,  and 
talks  with  them  about  his  own  death,  explaining  its  signifi- 
cance. These  disciples  do  not  recognize  him  until  he  makes 
himself  known  to  them  in  the  breaking  of  bread.  Having 
made  himself  known  he  vanishes.  At  this  the  disciples  rise 
up  and  make  haste  and  return  to  Jerusalem,  where  they  find 
their  fellow-disciples  assembled  in  a  certain  room,  in  a  wild 
state  of  excitement.  As  they  enter  the  room,  the  disciples 
from  Emmaus  are  greeted  with  a  cry  to  which  particular  at- 
tention should  be  given,  because  in  this  cry  is  an  important 
clue  to  the  mysteries  we  are  probing.  As  the  disciples  from 
Emmaus  enter  the  room  in  Jerusalem,  they  are  greeted  with 
the  words:  "The  Lord  is  risen  indeed,  and  hath  appeared  to 
Simon." 

Almost  immediately  upon  the  arrival  of  the  disciples  from 
Emmaus,  while  the  doors  are  shut  in  the  room  where  they 
are  gathered  together,  Jesus  himself  appears  in  the  midst, 
eats  fish,  and  submits  to  handling  to  prove  that  he  is  alive, 
preaches  to  them  of  his  death  and  resurrection,  commands 
them  to  wait  in  Jerusalem  for  the  coming  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
and  then  he  takes  them  all  out  as  far  as  Bethany,  where,  in 
their  sight,  he  formally  ascends  into  the  heavens. 

The  whole  transaction  transpires  in  Jerusalem  and  its 
vicinity,  and  the  formal  ascension  apparently  takes  place  on 
the  evening  of  the  day  of  the  resurrection. 

In  the  Gospel  of  John,  the  Hellenizing  tendencies  which 
we  discovered  in  Luke  have  transformed  to  a  great  degree 
the  character  and  mission  of  Jesus.  He  is  no  longer  so  much 
the  Messiah  of  Jewish  expectation  as  he  is  the  Logos  of 
Grecian  speculation.  This  Gospel  is  of  low  historical  value. 
It  is  not  so  much  a  history  of  the  life  of  Jesus  as  it  is  an 
interpretation  of  his  character  and  mission.  The  book  was 
written  not  earlier  than  the  second  decade  of  the  second 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        179 

century  and  some  scholars  assert  that  it  belongs  to  the 
fourth  decade  of  that  century.  The  writer's  conception  of 
Jesus  is  in  startling  contrast  with  that  of  Mark,  Matthew, 
and  Luke.  His  Jesus  is  more  a  Greek, — or  rather  an  Ori- 
ental,— philosopher  than  he  is  a  Hebrew  prophet. 

In  its  account  of  the  resurrection,  John's  Gospel  follows 
closely  that  of  Luke.  Mary  Magdalene  goes  alone  to  the 
garden,  sees  the  angel  who  tells  her  of  the  resurrection.  She 
hurries  away  and  tells  Peter  and  John,  who,  at  her  word, 
run  together  to  the  sepulchre.  John  outruns  Peter,  but  does 
not  go  in.  Peter  comes  up  and  goes  in  and  sees  the  linen 
clothes  of  the  dead  lying  in  the  sepulchre. 

Meantime  Mary  Magdalene  has  seen  Jesus  himself  in  the 
garden. 

That  same  evening,  when  the  disciples  are  gathered  to- 
gether in  a  certain  room,  when  the  doors  are  shut,  Jesus  sud- 
denly appears,  breathes  on  them,  saying:  "Receive  ye  the 
Holy  Ghost.  Whose  soever  sins  ye  remit,  they  are  remitted 
unto  them ;  whose  soever  sins  ye  retain,  they  are  retained." 
And  then  he  disappeared. 

A  week  later  he  reappears  under  the  same  conditions,  sub- 
mits to  the  handling  of  Thomas,  and  disappears  once  more. 

There  is  no  formal  ascension. 

The  Twenty-first  Chapter  of  John, — which  is  of  doubtful 
authenticity,  insomuch  that  it  is  rejected  by  some  textual 
critics  and  bracketed  by  all, — gives  an  account  of  a  belated 
appearance  of  Jesus  to  his  disciples  at  Lake  Gennesaret  in 
Galilee,  where  the  Lord  makes  himself  known  by  a  miracu- 
lous draught  of  fishes.  But  this  is  so  clearly  a  reminiscence 
of  the  account  of  this  miracle  in  Mark,  Matthew,  and  Luke, — 
who  place  it  early  in  the  Galilean  ministry, — that  this  story 
of  John  is  without  historical  value. 

When  we  sum  up  the  testimony  to  the  resurrection  as 
given  us  in  the  Gospels,  we  find  that  all  the  appearances  of 
Jesus  recorded  by  Mark  occur  in  Galilee.  In  Matthew  the 
women  see  Jesus  in  the  garden.  In  Luke  all  these  appear- 
ances are  in  Jerusalem,  in  John  the  main  appearances  are  in 


180        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Jerusalem,  with  a  belated,  unhistorical  appearance  in  Galilee. 
Only  in  Luke  is  there  a  formal  ascension. 

In  all  of  the  accounts,  except  Matthew,  special  mention  is 
made  of  Peter.  And  in  all  the  accounts,  without  exception, 
Mary  Magdalene  is  the  first  to  see  the  risen  Lord.  It  is  this 
fact  which  gave  rise  to  the  celebrated  passage  in  Kenan's 
"Origins  of  Christianity."  This  writer  says: 

"For  the  historian  the  life  of  Jesus  ends  with  his  death. 
But  so  deep  was  the  impression  which  he  made  upon  the 
hearts  of  his  disciples  and  upon  some  devout  women  that 

for  them  he  was  for  several  days  alive  and  consoling 

Whether  the  body  of  Jesus  was  taken  from  the  tomb,  whether 
excited  religious  emotion  always  credulous,  created  the  evi- 
dence to  sustain  the  resurrection?  this  for  want  of  peremp- 
tory evidence  we  shall  never  know,  but  we  can  confidently 
affirm  that  in  this  transaction  Mary  Magdalene  had  the  prin- 
cipal part.  Divine  power  of  love!  Sacred  moments  in  which 
the  passion  of  an  hallucinated  woman  gave  to  the  world  a 
resurrected  God." 

As  we  read  these  words  of  the  French  savant  we  are  un- 
easy in  our  minds ;  nor  can  we  rest  content  with  the  saying 
of  Matthew  Arnold,  which  is  partly  true,  that  we  see  a  legend 
growing  under  our  eyes,  or  as  we  might  more  poetically  ex- 
press it,  we  are  present  at  the  blooming  of  a  religious  Mythos 
with  its  promise  of  a  new  seedtime  and  harvest.  We  can- 
not stop  our  investigation  with  this  easy  solution.  We  can- 
not think  that  the  greatest  of  realities  had  its  origin  in  the 
vaguest  of  unrealities.  We  have  not  yet  solved  our  prob- 
lem. We  have  not  yet  accounted  for  the  appearance  in  Gali- 
lee, nor  for  the  Petrine  tradition. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  181 

CHAPTER  XXXV 
The  Petrine  Tradition 

When  we  pass  from  the  Gospels  to  the  Epistles  we  are  not 
going  forward  but  backward  in  time.  We  are  reascending 
the  hills  of  antiquity,  where  we  shall  discover  another  well- 
spring  of  thought  and  feeling,  the  source  of  a  tradition  distinct 
and  different  from  that  which  we  have  already  examined,  which 
at  first  obscure  and  uncertain,  gradually  reveals  itself  as  the 
great  river  of  Christian  doctrine  and  discipline,  to  which  the 
stream  issuing  from  the  sepulchre  at  Jerusalem  is  only  a 
tributary. 

The  Gospels  are  not  the  earliest  written  records  of  Chris- 
tian history.  This  place  of  honor  is  occupied  by  the  letters 
of  Paul  to  the  various  churches  he  founded.  Of  these  letters 
the  first  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  is  most  important  to  our 
present  investigation.  In  that  letter  Paul  gives  an  account 
of  the  resurrection  which  antedates  that  of  Mark  by  at  least 
twenty  years.  Paul  makes  the  resurrection  the  sine  qua  non 
of  Christianity.  No  resurrection,  no  Christianity.  If  Christ 
is  not  risen,  then  our  faith  is  vain.  It  is  to  be  supposed,  there- 
fore, that  Paul  would  buttress  this  necessary  doctrine  with 
every  testimony,  every  argument  that  could  be  brought  to  its 
support.  But,  strange  to  say,  Paul  did  not  know,  or  did  not 
value,  the  story  of  the  women  who  went  to  the  tomb  on  the 
morning  of  the  resurrection. 

Paul  was  an  educated  man,  trained  to  discriminate  between 
the  important  and  the  unimportant,  and  his  account  of  the 
resurrection  has  all  the  conciseness  and  clearness  of  a  scien- 
tific formula.  This  formula  is  as  follows-. 

Moreover,  I  declare  unto  you  the  Gospel  which  I  preached  unto  you,  which 
also  ye  have  received,  and  wherein  ye  stand;  by  which  also  ye  are  saved;  if 
ye  hold  fast  the  word  which  I  preached  unto  you,  except  ye  believe  in  vain,  for 
I  delivered  unto  you  first  of  all  that  which  I  also  received,  how  that  Christ 
died  for  our  sins  according  to  the  scripture ;  and  that  he  was  buried,  and 
that  he  rose  again  the  third  day  according  to  the  Scriptures:  And  that 


182        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

he  was  seen  of  Cephus,  then  of  the  twelve;  After  that  he  was  seen  of 
about  five  hundred  brethren  at  once;  of  whom  the  greater  part  remain 
until  this  present,  but  some  are  fallen  asleep.  After  that  he  was  seen  of 
James;  then  of  all  the  apostles.  And  last  of  all  he  was  seen  of  me  also, 
as  to  one  born  out  of  due  time. 

I 

This  account  of  the  resurrection  Paul  received  from  the 
apostles  in  Jerusalem.  It  expresses  the  mind  of  the  primi- 
tive church;  and  as  we  see,  the  primal  source  of  the  belief  in 
the  resurrection  was  not  Mary  Magdalene  but  Cephus,  which 
is  Aramaic  for  Peter. 

We  have  further  and  conclusive  evidence  of  the  mind  of 
the  church  in  this  matter  in  a  saying  in  the  Gospel  of  Luke, 
to  which  our  attention  was  called  when  we  examined  that 
document,  when  the  disciples  from  Emmaus  came  to  the  dis- 
ciples in  Jerusalem  on  the  afternoon  of  resurrection  day,  we 
remember,  that  according  to  Luke,  they  from  Emmaus  were 
greeted  by  those  in  Jerusalem  with  the  cry  "The  Lord  is 
risen  indeed,  and  hath  appeared  unto  Simon."  There  could 
not  be  stronger  evidence  that  in  the  mind  of  the  church  Peter, 
not  Mary  Magdalene,  was  the  first  to  see  the  risen  Lord.  And 
it  is  this  fact  which  has  given  Peter  the  place  which  he  holds 
in  Christian  history. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 
The  Character  of  Peter 

We  must  now,  in  the  course  of  our  investigation,  with- 
draw our  attention  from  Mary  Magdalene,  and  even  from 
Jesus  himself,  and  focus  our  thought  upon  Peter;  for  in  the 
character  of  Peter  and  in  his  relation  to  Jesus  lie  the  solu- 
tion of  our  problem. 

Peter  was  a  Galilean  peasant,  a  fisherman  by  occupation ; 
he  was  a  man  of  simple  mind  and  ardent  feeling;  he  was  a 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  183 

passionate  patriot ;  he  hated  the  Roman  dominion,  and  longed 
for  its  overthrow.  Galilee  in  those  days  was  seething  with 
discontent  and  sedition,  and  the  heart  of  Peter  was  in  unison 
with  the  heart  of  his  people.  He  fed  his  heart  on  the  hope 
and  expectation  of  the  coming  of  the  Messiah,  who  would 
put  down  the  mighty  from  their  seat  and  exalt  the  humble 
and  meek,  who  would  raise  up  the  tabernacle  of  David  that 
was  fallen  down  and  restore  the  Kingdom  of  Israel.  The 
preaching  of  John  the  Baptist  had  stirred  all  Jewry,  and 
without  doubt  Peter  came  under  the  power  of  this  prophet. 
He  was  longing  for  the  moment  of  action  to  come.  He  needed 
only  a  leader  to  give  himself  unqualifiedly  to  the  cause  of  the 
redemption  of  Israel. 

And  the  leader  came,  and  in  Peter  found  a  man  instinct 
with  the  genius  of  the  follower.  Such  following  is  necessary 
to  all  leadership.  The  genius  of  the  leader  is  not  more  rare 
than  the  genius  of  the  follower.  The  follower  must  be  a 
man  without  initiative,  without  personal  ambition.  He  must 
be  the  alter  ego  of  his  leader.  He  must  divine  his  leader's 
mind,  think  his  leader's  thoughts,  execute  his  leader's  de- 
signs. Such  followers  are  second  only  to  their  leaders  in  im- 
portance, without  them  the  leader  is  powerless  to  accom- 
plish. Napoleon  found  such  a  follower  in  Berthier,  Grant  in 
Rawlins, — Jesus  in  Peter. 

When  Peter  attached  himself  to  Jesus,  he  was  in  the  full 
prime  of  his  manhood.  The  follower  was  years  older  than 
the  Master,  and  he  came  to  have  for  him  that  unselfish  af- 
fection which  the  elder  has  for  the  younger.  Peter's  love  for 
Jesus  was  like  the  love  of  Jonathan  for  David ;  "passing  the 
love  of  women,"  it  had  all  the  ardor  of  the  devotion  of  Mar- 
shall Ney  for  Bonaparte.  It  is  clear,  from  all  accounts,  that 
from  the  very  first  Peter  ranked  next  to  Jesus  in  the  company 
that  followed  the  Master  in  the  Galilean  period.  His  name 
always  comes  first  in  any  list  of  Jesus'  following,  and  it  has 
maintained  its  primacy  to  the  present  hour. 

When  Jesus  entered  upon  his  public  ministry  after  his 
baptism  by  John,  he  did  nothing  else  but  continue  the  work 
of  his  forerunner.  He  took  up  the  cry  of  the  Baptist:  "Re- 


184  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

pent,  for  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  at  hand !"  This  cry  was 
full  of  meaning  to  Jewish  ears;  it  meant  nothing  less  than 
the  coming  of  the  Messiah,  who  in  the  name  and  power  of 
Jehovah,  the  Jewish  God,  should  break  the  power  of  the 
Gentiles  and  give  to  Israel  freedom  and  dominion  in  the 
earth. 

But  while  the  message  of  John  and  Jesus  was  the  same, 
their  method  of  delivering  it  was  widely  different.  John 
was  primarily  a  preacher,  Jesus  was  essentially  a  teacher. 
John  was  a  man  of  emotion,  Jesus  a  man  of  thought;  John 
was  a  man  of  the  desert,  Jesus  a  man  of  the  town  and  the 
countryside;  John  proclaimed  the  kingdom  of  God,  Jesus  ex- 
plained it;  John  had  hearers,  Jesus  had  scholars;  John 
preached  to  a  congregation,  Jesus  taught  a  school.  And  of 
these  scholars  of  Jesus,  Peter  was  the  most  eager.  He  aban- 
doned his  ordinary  way  of  living,  he  left  his  boats  and  nets 
on  the  lakeside  and  became  a  peripatetic  pupil  of  a  peripat- 
etic teacher.  His  untutored  mind  was  as  wax  to  receive  the 
teachings  of  the  Master.  The  world  of  the  mind  of  Jesus 
was  reproduced  in  the  mind  of  Peter.  Peter's  want  of  or- 
iginality made  his  nature  capacious  to  store  the  original 
thinking  of  Jesus. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 
Peter  Proclaimed  Jesus  Messiah 

As  far  as  we  can  gather  from  the  evidence  at  hand,  we 
conclude  that  toward  the  end  of  its  second  year  the  mission 
of  Jesus  came  to  a  crisis.  His  teaching  had  alienated  the 
rulers  and  wearied  the  people.  So  far  as  he  was  concerned 
the  promised  kingdom  of  God  was  degenerating  into  another 
rabbinical  school.  He  was  to  outward  seeming  only  an- 
other scribe  squabbling  with  the  scribes  of  the  older  schools. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  185 

His  popularity  was  waning,  his  spirit  failing.  Jesus  con- 
ceived of  the  kingdom  of  God  in  terms  of  righteousness  and 
holiness.  He  was  that  saddest  of  all  men,  the  preacher  of  ab- 
solute truth  in  a  relative  world.  Before  the  kingdom  of  God 
that  he  preached  could  come,  men  must  be  just  and  women 
pure. 

The  preaching  of  Jesus  was  revolutionary.  He  denied  the 
right  of  property  and  the  lawfulness  of  government.  He 
seemed  to  expect  that  at  his  preaching  the  rich  would  abandon 
their  wealth  and  the  rulers  their  seats  of  authority.  But  all 
his  preaching  accomplished  was  the  irritation  of  the  possess- 
ing classes,  the  discontent  of  the  multitude.  All  this  teach- 
ing and  preaching  seemed  to  come  to  nothing.  The  funda- 
mentals of  the  kingdom  had  been  explained  and  reexplained, 
but  no  superstructure  had  risen  on  this  foundation.  The 
people  would  not  respond  to  the  teaching.  In  his  impa- 
tience Jesus  cried :  "O,  evil  and  adulterous  generation,  how 
long  shall  I  be  with  you,  how  long  shall  I  suffer  you?" 

This  impatience  of  the  Master  communicated  itself  to  his 
following;  they  had  had  enough  of  talk,  they  wanted  action. 
They  knew  what  the  coming  kingdom  ought  to  be ;  now  let 
the  coming  kingdom  come. 

In  this  time  of  hesitation  and  distress  Jesus  led  his  dis- 
ciples to  the  borders  of  the  land  of  Israel.  He  came  to 
Caesarea-Phillipi,  and  his  face  was  toward  the  west.  He  had 
but  to  go  forward  and  leave  behind  him  the  hostility  of  the 
rulers  and  the  indifference  of  the  people.  But  he  would  also 
leave  behind  the  hope  and  expectation  of  the  Jews ;  he  would 
abandon  the  kingdom  of  God ;  his  lever  would  be  without 
fulcrum,  and  he  not  a  prophet  of  God  but  only  a  teacher  of 
wisdom.  And  of  teachers  of  wisdom  there  were  a  plenty  in 
the  world. 

At  this  critical  moment  in  the  history  of  Jesus  and  of 
religion  Peter  interposed,  saved  the  leadership  of  Jesus  from 
ruin,  and  made  possible  for  Jesus  that  career  that  has  placed 
him  at  the  right  hand  of  God  and  given  him  the  worship 
of  the  most  advanced  races  of  mankind.  Peter  proclaimed 
the  Messiahship  of  Jesus. 


186        THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

It  is  not  clear  from  the  evidence  whether  Jesus  from  the 
first  thought  of  himself  as  the  king  of  the  kingdom  that  he 
preached.  There  is  an  uncertainty,  a  fluctuation  in  his 
thought,  which  makes  it  difficult  to  determine  just  what  his 
attitude  toward  the  Messiahship  was.  In  his  early  teaching 
he  seems  to  think  of  the  kingdom  of  God  as  an  inward  prin- 
ciple rather  than  as  an  outward  institution.  The  children  of 
the  kingdom  were  the  poor  in  spirit,  the  meek,  those  thirst- 
ing for  righteousness,  the  merciful,  the  pure  in  heart,  the 
peace  makers,  the  persecuted.  It  was  not  "lo,  here,  nor  lo, 
there,  for  the  kingdom  of  God  was  within."  It  was  not  an 
outward  polity,  it  was  an  inward  state.  But  this  quiet  piet- 
ism could  only  be  personal ;  it  could  not  be  social ;  it  could 
not  be  organic.  It  might  be  the  kingdom  of  God;  it  could 
never  be  the  kingdom  of  David.  It  might  save  the  human 
soul;  it  could  not  deliver  the  people  of  Israel.  It  is  the 
tragedy  of  the  life  of  Jesus  that  he  had  to  reconcile  these 
antagonistic  conceptions.  He  knew  in  his  soul  that  he  was 
the  child  of  God;  but  was  he  the  king  of  the  Jews? 

It  was  at  Caesarea-Phillipi  that  Jesus  paused  to  take  account 
of  himself.  Who  was  he?  what  was  he?  He  turned  in 
his  sore  perplexity  to  his  followers  and  asked  them : 

"Whom  do  men  say  that  I  am?" 

They  answered : 

"Some  say  you  are  John  the  Baptist,  and  some  that  you 
are  one  of  the  old  prophets." 

Still  more  anxiously  Jesus  asks : 

"But  whom  do  ye  say  that  I  am?" 

Peter  answered  at  once: 

"Thou  art  the  Christ  of  God." 

Magnificent  words! — giving  Jesus  the  spiritual  leadership 
of  the  world,  and  Peter  a  power  second  only  to  that  of  his 
Master. 

Jesus  accepted  the  proclamation  of  Peter  as  the  inspira- 
tion of  God. 

"Blessed  art  thou,  Simon  bar  Jonah !"  he  cried,  "Flesh  and 
blood  hath  not  revealed  this  unto  thee,  but  my  Father  in 
heaven." 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  187 

From  this  moment  all  hesitation  ceases,  Jesus  adopts  the 
current  conception  of  the  Messiahship.  His  mission  is  not 
to  the  Gentiles  but  the  Jews.  He  is  to  restore  the  kingdom 
to  Israel.  His  work  lies  not  out  yonder  in  the  world,*  he 
must  set  his  face  toward  Jerusalem.  David's  throne  must  be 
set  up  in  David's  city. 

Under  this  new  impulse  Jesus  loses  his  simplicity.  He  is 
moody;  he  walks  apart  from  his  following;  they  dare  not 
speak  to  him.  They  have  proclaimed  him  their  king;  they 
fall  naturally  into  the  rank  of  subjects. 

The  word  spreads  throughout  Galilee  that  the  Messiah  has 
come,  and  is  on  his  way  to  Jerusalem.  The  whole  country- 
side is  aflame  with  excitement;  multitudes  go  before  and 
follow  after,  crying:  "Hosannah  in  the  highest!  Blessed  is  he 
that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord !"  And  Jesus  enters 
Jerusalem  in  triumph  as  the  Messiah  of  God. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 
Peter  Denies  Jesus 

And  then  nothing  happens.  Jesus  falls  back  into  his  old 
method  of  teaching.  Instead  of  proclaiming  the  kingdom 
and  calling  the  people  to  arms,  he  is  telling  stories  in  the 
temple ;  he  is  rousing  the  extreme  anger  of  the  priests  and 
the  scribes  by  his  fierce  denunciation  of  their  vices ;  he  is 
disappointing  the  people  by  his  inaction, — and  the  inevitable 
end  comes. 

The  priests  make  ready  to  seize  him ;  the  people  forsake 
him.  Jesus  makes  no  effort  to  oppose  his  enemies,  no  effort 
to  escape  them.  He  comprehends  now  to  the  full  his  mis- 
sion :  he  is  not  to  fight  for  the  kingdom  but  to  die  for  it. 
His  earlier  conception  of  the  kingdom  was  the  true  one. 
The  kingdom  of  God  is  within  him.  He  cannot  establish 
it  by  outward  violence,  only  by  inward  obedience. 


188        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

This  action  of  the  Master  is  bewildering  to  his  following, 
especially  to  Peter.  Peter  had  come  down  to  fight  for  the 
kingdom;  he  had  bought  a  sword.  Had  Jesus  given  the 
word,  Peter  had  been  the  first  to  raise  the  war-cry,  "The 
sword  of  the  Lord  and  Gideon !"  and  to  have  bathed  his 
sword  in  the  blood  of  the  Gentiles.  The  Jewish  authorities 
were  not  wrong  in  fearing  at  that  time  an  uprising  of  the 
people.  Had  Jesus  made  the  sign,  Peter  would  have  led 
the  Galileans  in  an  effort  to  overthrow  the  Roman  power  and 
reestablish  the  kingdom  of  Israel. 

But  Jesus  did  not  speak  the  word.  Without  an  effort  at 
defense  or  escape,  he  submitted  to  seizure.  He  was  arrested, 
condemned,  and  executed. 

This  unexpected  turn  of  events  changed  the  courage  of 
Peter  into  panic  fear.  Instead  of  the  excitement  of  the  con- 
flict, he  was  paralyzed  by  the  cold,  benumbing,  process  of  the 
law.  He  followed  Jesus  to  the  Hall  of  Annas,  and  there, 
when  he  was  accused  of  being  one  of  his  company,  he  denied 
his  leader,  then  denied  him  again  and  again.  In  an  agony 
of  shame  and  terror  Peter  turned  and  fled  into  the  darkness, 
in  the  which  we  lose  sight  of  him  until  the  Sunday  afternoon 
of  the  day  of  resurrection. 

From  indications  that  we  find  in  the  narrative,  from  our 
knowledge  of  the  character  of  Peter  and  of  human  nature  in 
general,  we  may  safely  conclude  that  Peter  hid  himself  in 
the  crowd  and  followed  Jesus  to  the  Pretorium  and  to  Cal- 
vary. He  saw  the  scourging  and  the  crowning  with  thorns, 
he  heard  the  death  sentence;  he  saw  the  nailing  of  the  hands 
and  the  feet,  he  watched  from  the  third  to  the  ninth  hour ; 
he  heard  the  death-cry  from  the  cross,  and  then  in  the  des- 
peration of  despair  he  turned  and  fled  away  into  his  own 
country,  Galilee. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  189 

CHAPTER  XXXIX 
Peter's  Flight  in  Despair 

The  life  of  Peter,  from  the  time  that  he  fled  from  the  cross 
until  his  reappearance  among  the  brethren  in  Jerusalem  on 
the  afternoon  of  the  day  of  resurrection,  has  an  importance 
in  the  religious  life  of  mankind  that  can  hardly  be  measured. 
During  those  wonderful  hours  that  event  transpired  which 
made  Peter  the  leader  of  the  greatest  religious  movement  in 
history.  In  reconstructing  the  life  of  Peter  during  this 
period,  we  shall  have  to  make  use  of  such  hints  as  we  can  find 
in  the  records,  which  are  few,  assisted  by  our  knowledge  of 
the  human  soul  and  its  workings  under  given  conditions. 

The  first  impulse  of  Peter  when  assured  of  the  death  of 
Jesus  was  to  escape  from  the  horrors  of  his  position  and  find 
refuge  in  his  own  country,  Galilee.  In  obedience  to  this  impulse 
he  took  the  direct  route  homeward  through  Samaria.  His 
actions  were  not  those  of  a  man  who  was  conscious  of  what 
he  was  doing,  but  rather  of  one  who  was  carried  away  by 
the  subconscious  forces  within  him. 

The  soul  of  Peter  throughout  that  journey  homeward  was 
the  scene  of  a  terrific  psychic  storm.  Everything  upon  which 
his  life  rested  was  swept  away.  He  had  loved  Jesus  as  one 
man  seldom  loves  another,  and  Jesus  was  dead.  No  mother 
could  mourn  her  first-born  more  despairingly  than  Peter 
mourned  the  loss  of  the  youth  whom  his  heart  cherished. 
Not  only  had  he  been  bereaved  of  his  friend,  he  had  also  lost 
his  leader.  Peter  had  cast  in  his  personal  and  political  for- 
tunes with  Jesus.  He  had  forsaken  father  and  mother,  wife 
and  children,  his  ways  of  livelihood,  that  he  might  further 
the  plans  of  his  Master,  and  now  all  those  plans  had  come  to 
naught !  It  was  not  some  little  thing  that  he  expected  of 
Jesus ;  it  was  nothing  less  than  the  restoration  of  the  king- 
dom of  Israel, — the  deliverance  of  his  country  from  the  hated 
rule  of  the  Gentile.  And  now  this  hope  for  the  liberty  of  his 
people  was  blasted  as  by  a  stroke  from  heaven.  Peter  had 
proclaimed  Jesus  Messiah,  he  had  made  him,  as  it  were,  God 


190  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

in  the  earth,  and  this  God  had  died  the  vile  death  of  the 
criminal  slave.  Could  wreck  of  faith  and  hope  be  more  com- 
plete? From  the  devastated  heart  of  Peter  went  up  the 
desolating  cry  "There  is  no  God, — there  is  no  Saviour!" 

But  beside  this  death  of  his  friend,  this  blasting  of  his 
hopes,  this  dishonor  of  his  God,  a  calamity  had  come  upon 
Peter  which  mortal  man  seldom  survives.  In  the  wreck  and 
ruin  of  the  storm  he  had  lost  his  own  soul ;  in  the  critical 
moment  of  his  life  his  own  spirit  had  failed  him.  In  that 
moment  Peter  had  basely  denied  his  friend,  had  left  his 
leader  in  the  lurch,  had  lost  his  hold  on  God.  He  who 
thought  himself  brave  had  turned  craven ;  he  had  trembled 
at  the  word  of  a  maid ;  he  had  hid  himself  in  a  crowd  that 
had  blasphemed  his  Lord !  All  the  horrors  of  that  horrible 
time  were  swallowed  up  in  the  overwhelming  horror  that 
Peter  had  denied  Jesus, — denied  him  again  and  again,  denied 
him  with  an  oath.  And  this  action  was  beyond  repair.  Jesus 
was  dead  and  could  never  know  the  shame,  the  sorrow,  the 
bitter  repentance  of  his  recreant  friend. 

So  this  bereaved,  disappointed,  abased  man  went  on  and 
on  through  the  darkness,  losing  in  his  sorrow  and  remorse 
all  sense  of  fatigue,  and  the  early  morning  light  found  him 
in  the  defiles  of  Gilboa,  thirty  miles  and  more  from  the  scene 
of  his  disaster.  As  he  came  over  the  shoulder  of  the  moun- 
tain he  saw  his  own  country,  Galilee,  lying  quiet  under  the 
dawning.  He  saw  Mount  Carmel  and  Lake  Gennasaret ;  he 
saw  Capernaum  and  Bethsaida.  That  land  which  was  sacred 
to  the  eyes  of  all  Israel,  the  land  of  Elijah  and  Elisha,  the 
land  in  which  he  had  walked  and  talked  with  Jesus,  was  so 
peaceful  in  the  morning  light  that  the  horrors  from  which 
Peter  had  fled  seemed  to  him  but  a  nightmare  from  which 
he  had  awakened  to  find  himself  safe  in  his  own  country. 
This  peace  of  nature  hushed  the  storm  in  the  soul  of  Peter. 
He  listened,  and  he  heard  the  tinkling  of  the  sheep  bells;  he 
looked,  and  he  saw  the  shepherds  driving  their  flocks  to 
pasture.  He  went  to  some  shepherd's  hut,  begged  a  morsel 
of  bread  and  some  goat's  milk,  to  break  his  fast,  and  lay 
down  on  the  ground  and  slept  the  deep  sleep  of  exhaustion. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  191 

CHAPTER  XL 
Peter's  Return  in  Joy 

When  Peter  came  to  himself,  the  sun  was  past  meridian. 
He  came  out  of  his  sleep  with  a  bound  and  looked  about, 
amazed  to  find  himself  in  Galilee.  And  then  he  remembered 
yesterday.  What  was  he  doing  here  in  his  own  country, 
while  Jesus  lay  dead  in  Jerusalem?  Why  was  he  in  hiding 
while  his  brethren  were  in  danger  of  their  lives?  His  polt- 
roonery roused  in  Peter  a  great  anger  against  himself.  He 
shook  himself  fiercely,  turned  about,  and  set  his  feet  in  the 
way  by  the  which  he  had  come,  to  return  to  Jerusalem. 

On  his  return  journey  the  soul  of  Peter  was  calm  with  the 
calmness  of  settled  grief;  his  heart  revived;  he  lived  over 
again  his  life  with  Jesus.  Every  word  that  had  fallen  from 
the  lips  of  the  Master  came  into  his  remembrance  with  new 
and  fuller  meaning;  every  act  of  the  Master  gained  new 
significance.  He  began  to  see  a  divine  purpose  in  the  death 
of  Jesus.  Jesus  could  not  be  a  man  of  violence,  he  could 
not  sow  the  tares  of  hatred  in  the  world.  His  death  was 
sacrificial ;  it  was  a  testimony  to  the  truth ;  an  offering  to 
God  for  the  sins  of  the  world. 

As  Peter  thought  on  these  things  his  heart  went  out  in  one 
longing  desire  to  see  Jesus  again. 

And  he  saw  him. 

Before  him,  his  eyes  accustomed  to  the  darkness,  the  Mas- 
ter walked,  going  toward  Jerusalem.  The  heart  of  Peter  stood 
still,  he  dared  not  cry  out,  he  dared  not  rush  forward  and 
lay  hold  of  the  hand  of  the  Lord ;  but  he  followed  after  as 
the  Master  walked  on  before. 

Then  Peter  spake,  and  the  Master  listened.  He  poured 
out  all  his  sorrow  and  remorse,  all  his  hopes  and  fears  in  the 
Master's  hearing,  and  the  Master  did  not  repulse  him.  Hour 
after  hour  these  two  went  on  in  the  way  toward  Jerusalem, — 
the  Master  going  before,  and  Peter  following  after.  When 
the  morning  began  to  break,  they  had  come  to  the  borders 


192        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

of  the  land  of  Judah,  and  Peter  paused  to  rest  and  the  Master 
also  stool  still,  his  form  dimly  fading  in  the  growing  light. 
Then  Peter  turned  about  and  he  saw  the  figure  receding  in 
the  distance,  as  if  Jesus  were  going  back  into  Galilee. 

And  Peter  made  haste,  flying  on  the  wings  of  joy,  and  came, 
breathless,  into  the  company  of  the  disciples  in  Jerusalem, 
bringing  the  glad  tidings  that  Jesus  had  risen  from  the  dead, 
that  he  had  walked  and  talked  with  him  through  the  night, 
and  that  now  Jesus  had  gone  back  into  Galilee. 


CHAPTER  XLI 
Psychic  Projection 

The  process  by  which  Peter  had  seen  Jesus  is  known  to 
psychology  as  psychic  projection.  In  times  of  cerebral  ex- 
citement, when  the  objective  mind  is  in  abeyance,  the  psychic 
force  projects  the  images  of  the  subjective  mind  on  the  lenses 
of  the  eye,  and  the  man  sees  what  he  thinks.  He  expresses 
his  thought  to  himself,  not  in  words  but  in  visions.  This  ex- 
pressing of  thought  in  vision  is  a  reversion  to  primitive  habit. 

Ages  and  ages  before  man  had  evolved  language  and  could 
think  in  words  he  thought  in  vision.  He  saw  with  his  mind's 
eye  what  his  mind  conceived.  That  hard  and  fast  boundary 
between  the  outward  and  the  inward,  between  the  physical 
and  the  psychic,  which  limits  the  thinking  of  the  modern 
educated  man,  did  not  hold  in  the  primitive  age ;  it  does  not 
hold  now  with  children  nor  with  any  one  in  sleep  or  in  de- 
lirium. In  our  sleep,  when  our  evolved  objective  mind  is 
quiescent,  we  revert  to  primitive  custom  and  think  in  visions. 
Our  vision  is  purely  psychic,  having  no  relation  at  the  time 
with  our  physical  senses.  The  grown-up  educated  man  has 
become  so  habituated  to  think  in  words  that  he  has  largely 
lost  the  power  to  think  in  visions.  The  artist  retains  that 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  193 

power :  the  painter  sees  with  the  inward  eye ;  the  musician 
hears  with  the  inward  ear,  the  deaf  Beethoven  heard  in  his 
soul  his  own  divine  harmonies. 

The  mass  of  early  Christians  were  primitive  people.  Peter's 
power  of  verbal  expression  was  most  meager.  It  was  per- 
fectly natural  for  him  to  think  in  visions,  and  when  he  came 
to  the  little  band  of  brethren  he  found  them  of  the  same  mind 
with  himself.  He  had  but  to  suggest  and  they  would  follow 
his  suggestion.  They  were  apt  subjects  for  psychical  con- 
tagion. 

We  can  readily  understand  that  Peter  took  the  eleven 
apostles  and  hastened  with  them  back  into  Galilee.  And 
there  at  a  certain  mountain  they  all  saw  Jesus.  Then  Jesus 
began  to  appear  first  to  one  and  then  to  another,  until  the 
fact  of  his  resurrection  crystallized  into  a  belief,  to  be  later 
formulated  into  a  doctrine. 

It  is  psychologically  significant  that  in  the  manifestation 
of  Jesus  to  Paul,  Paul  did  not  see  Jesus, — he  only  heard  him. 
Paul  was  an  educated  man,  his  power  to  think  in  vision  was 
limited.  Paul  had  never  seen  Jesus  in  the  flesh,  hence  he 
could  not  see  him  in  vision,  for  the  subjective  mind  can  only 
project  images  which  have  been  impressed  upon  it  by  the 
senses. 

Psychic  projection  is  recurrent.  The  last  appearance  of 
Jesus  to  Peter,  Christian  tradition  tells  us,  occurred  just  be- 
fore Peter's  death.  The  Apostle  was  in  Rome ;  a  persecution 
was  raging;  his  fellow-Christians  besought  him  to  leave  the 
city;  he  consented,  and  as  he  went  out  of  the  gate  he  saw 
Jesus  coming  in.  Peter  said  to  Jesus:  "Dot-nine,  quo  vadis?" 
(Lord,  whither  goest  thou?)  "To  be  crucified  in  thy  room," 
was  the  answer,  and  Peter  turned  about  and  went  back  into 
the  city  and  was  crucified,  at  his  own  request,  with  his  head 
downward. 

The  appearance  of  Jesus  to  Mary  in  the  garden  was  due  to 
the  well-established  fact  that  at  the  hour  of  death  and  for 
some  limited  time  afterward  the  soul  departing  has  the  power 
to  make  its  presence  known  to  receptive  spirits  ;  the  apparitions 
of  the  dying  or  dead  to  the  living  are  tha  commonplaces  of 


194        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

psychical  research.  Myers,  in  "Human  Personality,"  gives  in- 
stance after  instance  of  such  apparitions.  They  are  too  many 
and  too  well  authenticated  to  be  put  down  as  mere  mistakes 
or  frauds. 

That  the  apostles  and  the  primitive  church  did  not  attach 
much  importance  to  these  appearances  to  Mary  we  have  al- 
ready learned ;  but  they  were  seized  upon  by  the  Christian 
imagination,  and  became  the  fruitful  source  of  myth  and  leg- 
end. 

The  doctrine  and  the  discipline  of  the  church  have  their 
origin  in  the  vision  of  Peter.  The  worship  and  the  art  of  the 
church  are  derived  from  the  vision  of  Mary.  These  two 
streams  of  tradition  have  come  down  side  by  side,  each  main- 
taining its  distinct  character, — each  watering  a  different  region 
of  Christian  thought  and  feeling. 


CHAPTER  XLII 
The  Resurrection  of  the  Dead 

The  easy  acceptance  of  the  witness  of  Peter  and  Mary  to 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus  arises  from  the  fact  that  this  event 
was  in  accord  with  the  mode  of  thought  prevailing  at  the 
time.  Our  conception  of  the  universe  was  not  the  concep- 
tion of  Peter's  generation.  Our  universe, —  with  its  infinite 
space,  its  myriad  suns,  its  bewildering  worlds,  its  eternal  en- 
durance,— had  no  place  in  their  thoughts.  Their  universe 
was  limited  by  their  knowledge.  The  earth,  the  home  of 
living  men,  was  the  center  of  this  universe;  in  the  sky  the 
gods  had  their  thrones ;  in  the  earth  the  dead  rested. 

The  dead  of  the  ancient  world  were  not  nearly  so  dead  as 
are  the  dead  of  the  modern  world.  Our  dead  are  huddled 
away  in  cemeteries  and  are  soon  forgotten.  The  ancient  dead, 
after  the  evolution  of  the  family,  never  lost  their  place  in  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  195 

family  circle.     Their  existence  continued  in  the  tomb,  they 
were  the  guardians  of  the  family  life  and  the  family  estate. 

At  times  the  dead  came  out  of  the  tomb  to  warn  the  living. 
Psychic  projection,  by  means  of  which  the  dead  were  seen 
by  the  living,  was  of  constant  occurrence  in  the  primitive 
world.  And  this  gave  rise  to  a  belief  in  a  resurrection  of  the 
dead, — when  all  that  were  in  their  graves  should  come  forth 
and  stand  up  once  more  on  the  earth.  When  Peter  saw 
Jesus  he  said :  "This  is  the  resurrection.  He  who  was  dead 
has  risen,  he  has  overcome  death." 

By  those  who  have  little  experience  in  psychic  phenomena, 
who  do  not  live  in  the  psychic  world,  who  are  unacquainted 
with  its  laws,  to  whom  the  physical  only  is  real,  it  will  be 
objected  that  the  writer  has  based  the  mighty  event  of  the 
resurrection  on  a  delusion.  Peter  was  deluded  when  he 
thought  he  saw  Jesus  walking  before  him  on  the  way  to 
Jerusalem,  and  the  delusion  of  Peter  has  been  the  abiding 
delusion  of  the  Christian  Church. 

The  answer  to  this  objection  is  that  Peter,  when  he  saw 
Jesus,  was  under  the  power  not  of  a  delusion  but  of  an  illu- 
sion. A  delusion  is  the  negation  of  truth ;  an  illusion  is  truth 
seen  in  relation.  Throughout  our  lives  we  are  under  the 
power  of  an  illusion.  When  in  the  morning  we  say :  "The 
sun  is  rising,"  when  in  the  evening  we  say :  "The  sun  has 
set,"  we  are  under  illusion.  From  science  we  learn  that 
the  sun,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  never  rises  and  never  sets,  that 
it  is  we  who  rise  and  set  as  our  revolving  earth  carries  us 
above  and  below  the  line  of  the  sun's  light.  Yet  we  do  not 
err  when  we  say  the  sun  rises  and  sets ;  we  only  express  a  re- 
lative truth.  For  us  the  sun  does  rise  and  set,  and  it  al- 
ways will  so  long  as  man  is  on  the  earth  and  the  sun  is  in 
the  heavens. 

Likewise,  Peter,  when  he  saw  Jesus  walking  before  him  on 
the  way  to  Jerusalem,  was  under  the  power  not  of  a  delusion 
but  of  an  illusion.  Jesus  was,  indeed,  not  walking  in  a  physi- 
cal body  in  the  physical  world ;  but  he  was  walking  in  a 
psychical  body  through  the  psychical  world.  He  had  risen 


196        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

from  the  dead  to  stand  erect  in  the  heart  of  Peter  to  wield  a 
power  mightier  than  physical  man  can  exercise. 

Jesus'  walk  with  Peter  did  not  end  at  Jerusalem.  Those 
two  went  together  until  they  came  to  Rome,  and  there  Peter, 
in  the  name  and  power  of  Jesus,  laid  the  foundations  of  a  new 
dominion  which,  built  on  the  ruins  of  the  empire  of  the 
Caesars,  saved  Europe  from  utter  anarchy,  preserved  ancient 
learning,  and  for  ten  centuries,  in  the  name  of  Christ,  ruled 
the  Western  world  in  the  interests  of  morality,  religion,  and 
personal  salvation.  It  was  as  Jesus  said :  Men  could  kill  the 
body,  they  could  not  kill  the  soul  of  Jesus. 

We  have  a  like  instance  of  resurrection  in  the  case  of 
Caesar.  Brutus,  Cassius,  and  their  crew  thought  they  had 
killed  Caesar  at  the  foot  of  Pompey's  pillar,  and  so  they  had 
killed  the  body  of  Caesar,  but  they  could  not  kill  the  soul  of 
Caesar.  The  sun  had  not  set  that  day  before  the  soul  of 
Caesar  rose  up  and  went  marching  through  the  streets  of 
Rome,  followed  by  an  army  of  men  with  torches  in  their 
hands  to  burn  the  houses  of  those  murderers  over  their  heads, 
and  to  drive  them  from  the  city  never  to  return. 

The  soul  of  Caesar  had  risen  from  the  dead  to  stand  up  in 
the  psychic  life  of  Rome,  to  carry  to  its  issue  the  revolution 
that  the  genius  of  Caesar  had  inaugurated.  He  followed  up 
the  victories  of  Pharsalus  and  Thapsus  with  the  victories  of 
Phillipi  and  Actium,  and  made  the  name  of  Caesar  synony- 
mous with  efficient  government  for  all  time.  Whenever  a 
new  emperor  came  to  the  throne,  the  people  worshipped  and 
said :  "It  is  Caesar  come  again." 

We  have  had  in  our  own  history  a  remarkable  example  of 
psychic  resurrection.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  it  was 
declared  by  Lincoln  and  others  that  the  Federal  authorities 
had  no  intention  to  wage  war  against  slavery ;  the  purpose 
of  the  war  was  not  to  destroy  slavery  but  to  preserve  the 
Union.  But  both  North  and  South  had  to  reckon  with  a 
grim  old  warrior,  whom  the  slave  power  a  few  months  be- 
fore had  hanged  on  Charlestown  Green,  who  rose  up  from 
the  dead  to  take  moral  leadership  of  the  hosts  of  freedom. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  197 

A  Massachusetts  regiment  on  the  way  to  the  front  marched 
through  Washington  singing  the  song  of  John  Brown, — a 
song  of  few  words  and  simple  music.  Nobody  had  written 
the  words,  nobody  had  composed  the  music.  They  were 
nothing  less  than  the  words  and  music  of  rugged  old  John 
Brown  himself,  who  had  died  to  bring  this  war  to  pass,  who 
now  rose  from  the  dead  and  inspired  with  his  purpose  the 
hearts  of  the  soldiers  who  sang  this  song  as  they  went  on  to 
battle ;  and  in  the  sound  of  it  was  the  doom  of  slavery.  John 
Brown's  soul  could  have  no  peace  until  slavery  was  des- 
troyed. The  great  Lincoln  himself  was  obedient  to  the 
spirit  of  Brown  and  shares  with  Brown  the  greatness  and 
glory  of  that  period. 

We  have  now  arrived  at  the  point  where  we  can  define  a 
resurrected  person  as  one  who,  having  lived  and  died  physi- 
cally for  truth  and  righteousness,  rises  psychically  from  the 
dead  and  stands  up  in  the  power  of  his  resurrection  in  the 
hearts  of  men,  to  inspire  them  with  nobler  thoughts,  to  in- 
cite them  to  braver  actions. 

Such  was  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  Its  perplexities  arise 
from  the  necessary  confusion  of  psychic  with  physical  phe- 
nomena on  the  part  of  the  primitive  church,  and  its  present 
power  is  restrained  by  the  crystallization  of  psychic  phe- 
nomena as  physical  by  the  creed  of  the  later  church.  Consid- 
ered as  a  physical  phenomenon,  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  is 
not  only  improbable,  it  is  impossible,  it  is  absurd, — it  is 
grotesque.  Considered  as  a  psychic  phenomenon,  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  falls  into  the  natural  order  of  the  universe. 
What  we  call  death  is  not  the  destruction,  it  is  the  release  of 
psychic  force.  Personality  is  persistent  and  diffusive.  What 
Emerson  calls  the  "Oversoul"  is  simply  the  accumulated  liv- 
ing force  of  all-souls.  The  psychic  force  of  Jesus,  which  is 
his  personality  and  which  was  not  subject  to  death,  rose  up 
in  the  heart  of  Peter,  and  Peter  brought  him  to  Rome. 


198  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

CHAPTER  XLIII 

Christus,  The  War  God  of  the  Spiritual  Israel 

After  his  conversion  and  baptism  by  John,  followed  by  a 
brief  retirement  in  the  wilderness,  Jesus  entered  upon  a 
career  of  conquest  than  which  there  has  been  none  like  it 
in  all  the  history  of  the  world.  In  comparison  with  the  con- 
quests of  Jesus  the  conquests  of  Caesar,  both  in  time  and 
space,  are  of  the  second  order.  Caesar  laid  the  foundations 
of  an  empire  that  lasted  for  five  hundred  years.  Around 
Jesus  crystallized  a  government  that  endured  for  ten  cen- 
turies as  the  ruling  power  of  the  Western  world,  and  though 
long  since  betrayed  from  within  it  has  resisted  the  assaults 
of  time  for  ten  centuries  more.  Caesar  arrested  the  decay  of 
an  old  and  dying  civilization.  Jesus  gave  birth  to  a  new  and 
expanding  civilization  which  is  called  after  his  name.  This 
war  of  conquest  which  was  inaugurated  by  Jesus  ben  Joseph 
in  the  days  of  his  flesh  was  carried  to  a  successful  issue  by 
Christus,  the  son  of  Jehovah,  the  War  God  of  the  spiritual 
Israel.  In  the  conduct  of  this  warfare,  the  son  was  like  the 
father, — fierce  as  the  desert,  implacable  as  the  mountain.  He 
declared  war  against  the  enemies  of  his  people  from  genera- 
tion to  generation. 

The  purpose  of  this  warfare  was  nothing  less  than  the  de- 
struction of  one  world  and  the  creation  of  another.  After  his 
sojourn  in  the  desert,  Jesus  returned  to  his  own  city  of 
Nazareth  in  Galilee.  On  the  Sabbath  he  went  to  the  syna- 
gogue, and  the  ruler  of  the  synagogue  asked  him  to  read  a 
scripture  for  the  day.  The  young  man  was  given  the  scroll 
of  the  prophet  Isaiah.  And  he  opened  the  book  and  found 
the  place  where  it  was  written : 

The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me 

Because  he  anointed  me  to  preach  good  tidings  to  the  poor. 

He  hath   sent  me  to  proclaim  release  to  the  captives ; 

And  the  recovering  of  sight  to  the  blind; 

To  set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised, 

To  proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  199 

And  He  closed  the  book  and  gave  it  back  to  the  attendant  and  sat 
down ;  and  the  eyes  of  all  in  the  synagogue  were  fastened  on  him, 
and  he  began  to  say  unto  them:  "To-day  hath  this  scripture  been  ful- 
filled in  your  ears."  And  all  bear  him  witness  and  wondered  at  the 
gracious  words  which  proceeded  out  of  his  mouth.  And  they  said: 
"Is  not  this  Joseph's  son?"  And  Jesus  went  on  to  say:  "But  I  tell  you 
of  a  truth  many  widows  were  in  Israel  in  the  days  of  Elijah  when  the 
heavens  were  shut  up  for  three  years  and  six  months  when  great  famine 
was  throughout  all  the  land,  but  unto  none  of  them  was  Elijah  sent 
save  unto  Serepta,  a  City  of  Sidon,  unto  a  woman  that  was  a  widow. 
And  many  lepers  were  in  Israel  in  the  time  of  Elisha,  the  prophet,  and 
none  of  them  were  cleansed  save  Naaman,  the  Syrian."  And  all  they 
in  the  synagogue  when  they  heard  these  things  were  filled  with  wrath. 
And  rose  up  and  thrust  him  out  of  the  City  and  led  him  unto  the  brow 
of  the  hill,  whereon  their  City  was  built,  that  they  might  cast  him  down 
headlong.  But,  he,  passing  through  them,  went  his  way. 

In  this  bit  of  history  we  have  the  account  of  the  opening 
engagement  of  a  warfare  that  filled  the  world  with  its  tumult 
for  three  hundred  years.  As  we  read  these  words  we  can  see 
in  them  nothing  that  should  have  roused  the  wrath  of  the 
people  and  put  the  speaker  in  danger  of  his  life.  They  seem 
to  us  innocuous  words.  We  have  heard  them  a  thousand 
times  and  they  have  never  stirred  the  pulses  of  our  hearts. 
That  is,  however,  because  we  hear  the  words  and  do  not  un- 
derstand the  thought  behind  the  words. 

When  Bonaparte  took  command  of  the  Army  of  Italy, 
which  was  the  beginning  of  his  astounding  career,  he  issued 
a  proclamation  to  his  army.  He  said :  "Soldiers,  you  are 
hungry  and  ragged  and  without  pay.  The  government  owes 
you  much,  but  can  do  nothing  for  you.  Your  patience,  your 
courage,  do  you  honor  but  give  you  no  glory,  no  advantage. 
I  will  lead  you  into  the  most  fertile  plains  of  the  world. 
There  you  will  find  great  towns,  rich  provinces.  There  you 
will  find  honor,  glory,  and  riches.  Soldiers  of  Italy,  will 
you  be  wanting  in  courage?" 

Professor  Seeley  tells  us  that  in  this  proclamation  of  the 
young  Corsican  was  the  spirit  and  the  explanation  of  the 
history  of  Europe  for  the  next  twenty  years. 


200        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

So  I  find  in  the  sermon  of  Jesus,  in  the  synagogue  of 
Nazareth,  the  spirit  and  the  history  of  the  world  for  the  next 
ten  centuries.  By  that  proclamation  he  called  the  poor  of  the 
earth  to  engage  in  an  implacable  warfare  to  abolish  their 
poverty,  he  called  the  slaves  of  the  earth  to  an  irrepressible 
conflict  for  freedom,  he  stirred  the  heart  of  the  prisoner  to 
break  the  bars  of  his  prison  house,  he  proclaimed  to  the 
landless  their  right  to  take  possession  of  the  land,  to  the 
debtor  he  promised  deliverance  from  and  to  the  creditor  the 
loss  of  the  debt.  And  as  if  this  were  not  enough,  this  young 
man  had  the  audacity  to  strike  a  blow  at  the  precious  spe- 
cial privilege  of  the  Jew  to  call  himself,  and  to  be,  the  chosen 
and  only  people  of  the  God,  Jehovah. 

Surely  here  was  cause  enough  for  terror  and  wrath.  This 
young  man  said  captives  taken  in  war  must  not  be  enslaved 
by  their  captors.  The  slave  was  the  equal  of  his  master  and 
entitled  to  the  freedom  of  his  master.  What  a  horrible  doc- 
trine! How  subversive  of  society!  Who  would  go  to  war  if 
he  could  not  make  slaves  of  the  vanquished?  WTas  this  young 
man  wiser  than  Moses  who  had  given  the  captive  women  and 
children  as  slaves  to  the  victors?  Over  the  hill  with  such  a 
fellow ;  he  is  not  fit  to  live !  He  is  going  to  unchain  our 
prisoners  in  our  dungeons  and  turn  those  criminals  loose  to 
prey  upon  our  goods  and  endanger  our  lives.  Away  with 
him  to  the  dungeon,  to  consort  with  the  wretches  whom  he 
loves ! 

He  proclaims  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord.  He  would 
revive  that  obsolete,  impractical  law  of  Moses,  which  cancels 
all  debts  and  redistributes  all  land  once  every  fifty  years. 
Moses'  law  was  bad  enough,  but  this  insane  fellow  tells  us 
that  he  is  not  going  to  do  this  fool  thing  once  every  fifty 
years,  but  once  every  day.  Did  you  ever  hear  anything  so 
crazy  as  that?  Away  with  him ! — he  would  abolish  the  sacred 
rights  of  property  in  the  interests  of  a  lot  of  miserable  paupers 
who  haven't  sense  enough  to  know  the  main  chance  when 
they  see  it.  Away  with  him !  Kill  him,  and  throw  his  carcass 
to  the  beasts  of  the  field  and  the  fowls  of  the  air! 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS         201 

And  as  if  this  were  not  enough,  he  tells  us  out  of  our  own 
books  that  our  God,  Jehovah,  loves  a  Sidonian  and  a  Syrian 
as  well  as,  if  not  better,  than  he  loves  the  child  of  His  own 
son  Israel.  Who  can  listen  to  such  blasphemy?  Seize  the 
traitor,  drag  him  through  the  streets  and  throw  him  down  on 
the  rocks,  crush  every  bone  in  his  body  and  leave  him  there 
that  the  dogs  may  come  and  lick  up  his  blood. 

These  were  the  thoughts  and  the  feelings  roused  in  the 
hearts  of  his  hearers  as  this  young  man,  Jesus  ben  Joseph, 
in  his  native  city,  declared  war  for  the  abolition  of  slavery 
and  of  poverty;  for  the  cancellation  of  debts  and  the  redis- 
tribution of  the  land ;  for  the  suppression  of  special  privilege 
and  the  exaltation  of  the  poor  to  an  equality  with  the  rich. 
Such  doctrines  necessarily  excite  contention  and  made  war  to 
the  death  inevitable. 

The  method  of  warfare  adopted  by  this  young  general  was 
not  less  remarkable  than  was  the  purpose  of  his  warfare.  He 
did  not  deluge  the  earth  with  the  blood  of  his  enemies,  but  he 
made  it  re'd  with  the  blood  of  his  friends.  His  first  great  vic- 
tory was  won  when  he  himself  was  seized  in  the  night,  bound 
in  the  morning,  stript  naked  at  noon,  and  nailed  to  the 
cross  and  left  in  his  agony  to  die  in  his  pain  and  his  shame  at 
eventide.  His  enemies  stood  and  watched  him,  wagging 
their  heads  and  saying :  "Let  him  come  down  from  the  cross." 

And  he  did  come  down  from  the  cross  in  the  night,  tri- 
umphant over  death, — a  warrior  that  need  not  be  ashamed. 
With  the  breastplate  of  righteousness  as  his  defense,  with 
the  girdle  of  truth  as  his  strength,  with  the  sword  of  the 
spirit  as  his  weapon,  and  his  feet  shod  with  the  preparation 
of  the  Gospel  of  peace,  this  War  God  went  out  before  his 
people  in  the  most  singular  warfare  ever  waged  by  man 
against  man. 

In  this  warfare  men  conquered  by  defeat  and  lived  by  dy- 
ing. Christus,  the  War  God  of  spiritual  Israel,  was  taller 
than  Saul  and  fairer  than  David.  His  crown  was  of  thorns 
that  blossomed  with  roses  of  blood.  He  was  the  bridegroom 
of  a  spouse  of  whom  when  they  saw  her,  men  said :  "Who  is 
she  that  looketh  forth  as  the  morning,  fair  as  the  noon,  clear 


202        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

as  the  sun,  and  terrible  as  an  army  with  banners?"  Rank 
after  rank  his  soldiers  came  and  died, — in  the  sands  of  the 
arena,  on  crosses  on  the  hill-tops,  by  rack  and  by  fire, — and 
for  every  man  that  died  ten  men  stepped  up  to  take  his 
place. 

For  three  centuries  there  was  in  the  heart  of  the  Empire 
of  Rome  a  people  whom  the  terrors  of  the  Empire  could  not 
frighten.  The  tactics  of  Jesus  ben  Joseph,  Christus,  son  of 
Jehovah,  Generalissimo  of  the  armies  of  the  Lord,  outwitted 
the  strategy  of  Imperial  Caesars,  and  the  Labarum  was  low- 
ered to  the  Cross. 

The  Working-Class  God  had  driven  the  gods  of  the  leisure 
class  out  of  their  temples  and  appropriated  these  temples  to 
his  own  uses  as  the  spoils  of  war. 

The  triumph  of  primitive  Christianity  in  the  Graeco-Roman 
world  was  the  triumph  of  moral  over  physical  force. 


CHAPTER  XLIV 
Christus,  The  Tent  God  of  the  Spiritual  Israel 

The  Christian  religion  in  its  beginning  was, — and  indeed,  is 
now,  so  far  as  it  is  essentially  Christian, — only  a  variation  of 
Judaism.  At  the  first  it  differed  from  orthodox  Judaism  only 
in  the  belief  that  Jesus  ben  Joseph  of  Nazareth,  whom  the 
rulers  of  Israel  had  crucified  and  slain,  was  both  Lord  and 
Christ.  When  Peter  and  John  and  the  other  disciples  of 
Jesus  met  in  an  upper  room  after  his  death  they  did  nothing 
more  than  organize  another  synagogue,  of  which  there  were 
hundreds  in  Jerusalem  and  the  various  cities  of  Judea,  Galilee, 
and  the  world  of  Judaism  outside  the  Holy  Land. 

If  these  men  had  been  told  that  they  were  founding  a  new 
institution  which  would  become  the  rival  and  the  enemy  of 
the  synagogue  in  every  land,  they  would  have  cast  away 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  203 

such  a  purpose  as  far  from  their  intention  and  hateful  to 
their  loyalty  as  sons  of  Israel.  They  would  have  said,  and 
did  say: 

"Not  so,  we  are  the  true  Israel  holding  fast  to  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  fathers,  fervent  in  the  hope  and  expectation  of  all 
the  people  of  the  Jews  that  our  God  Jehovah  will  come  and 
deliver  his  people  Israel.  This  hope  for  us  has  become  a 
certainty;  we  have  seen  the  Lord's  Christ.  He  has  taught 
us  on  the  hillside,  walked  with  us  by  the  way,  healed  our  sick- 
ness, and  turned  our  sorrow  into  joy.  You,  not  knowing  who 
he  was,  killed  him,  but  Jehovah  gave  him  back  to  us  from 
the  dead ;  he  is  alive  in  our  midst,  and  from  his  hiding-place 
in  the  heavens  is  coming  with  glory  to  restore  the  kingdom 
to  Israel  and  to  bring  the  nations  into  subjection  to  the  Lord 
and  his  Christ." 

When  in  the  City  of  Antioch,  and  other  Gentile  cities,  the 
Christian  congregation  dropped  the  Jewish  word  synagogue 
and  adopted  the  Greek  word  Ecclesia  as  the  name  of  its  or- 
ganization, it  did  not  change  essentially  the  principles  or  the 
purposes  of  that  organization-  When  the  Church  separated 
from  the  synagogue  it  robbed  the  synagogue  of  its  god  and 
its  sacred  books ;  the  traditions  of  the  synagogue  became  the 
traditions  of  the  Church. 

The  organization  of  the  Christian  community  in  the  primi- 
tive church  was  nothing  else  than  a  reversion  to  the  tribal 
organization  of  the  Children  of  Israel  in  the  days  when  they 
wandered  in  the  desert  of  Zin.  Christians  called  each  other 
brothers,  not  in  the  narrow  sense  of  the  agnatic  family,  but 
in  the  broader  meaning  of  the  tribal  organization.  In  tribal 
Israel  the  minor  fatherhood  of  the  head  of  a  given  family 
was  subordinate  to  the  tribal  fatherhood  of  Abraham.  Wher- 
ever a  Jew  meets  a  Jew  he  is  conscious  of  this  tie  of  kindred. 
Though  the  one  may  be  poor  and  the  other  rich,  though  one 
is  a  cultured  German  and  the  other  an  ignorant  Pole,  the 
sense  of  a  common  origin  is  strong  enough  to  compel  the 
rich  and  the  cultured  to  recognize  his  brother  Jew  in  the 
poor  and  the  ignorant.  But  what  is  now  a  feeble  emotion 
was  in  the  days  of  tribal  organization  an  overmastering  pas- 


2U4  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

sion.  When  Israel  was  in  the  desert  her  elders  were  fathers 
in  Israel  and  her  young  men  brothers  in  Israel. 

This  form  of  organization  was  adopted  by  the  early  Chris- 
tian Church.  Brotherhood  was  based,  not  as  with  us,  on 
family  relationship,  but  upon  community  relationship.  The 
Christian  neophyte  entering  the  church  was,  in  the  thought 
and  language  of  the  church,  born  into  a  new  life  with  its  new 
relationships.  The  new-born  Christian,  by  the  fact  of  his 
birth,  was  a  member  of  the  household  of  God,  with  all  the 
privileges  to  which  his  birth  entitled  him.  When  he  came 
to  the  full  consciousness  of  his  new  life,  he  found  himself 
surrounded  by  elder  brothers  and  sisters,  able  and  willing  to 
help  him  in  his  struggle  for  life.  There  was  a  roof  over  his 
head  to  protect  him  from  the  elements  and  a  table  spread  at 
which  he  had  the  right  to  sit  and  eat  and  drink. 

All  this  is  the  commonplace  of  Christianity;  it  is  on  the 
lips  of  the  preacher  every  Sunday  and  holy  day,  but  what 
is  now  a  formula  was  once  a  fact.  The  progress  of  Chris- 
tianity was  accelerated  by  the  practice  of  Christianity ;  when 
the  Christian  movement  was  in  the  freshness  and  the  rush 
of  its  youth,  this  principle  of  tribal  brotherhood  came  with 
healing  to  a  world  in  which,  for  the  mass  of  the  people,  the 
prevailing  relation  was  that  of  master  and  slave.  In  such 
a  relation  there  can  be  no  feeling  of  mutuality.  The  master 
and  the  slave  are  creatures  of  worlds  as  different  as  the 
world  of  the  man  and  the  ox.  The  man  drives  the  ox  to 
labor  in  the  morning  and  kills  him  for  meat  in  the  evening, 
and  so  it  was  with  the  slaves  and  the  lower  working  class  in 
the  Graeco-Roman  world,  they  were  simply  meat  for  their 
masters. 

When  a  master  became  a  Christian  he  found  himself  re- 
duced to  the  equality  of  the  slave.  He  and  his  slaves  were 
brothers  in  this  household  of  God.  The  bishop,  who  re- 
ceived him  into  the  church,  might  be,  and  frequently  was, 
a  slave.  The  slave,  degraded  and  outraged  in  his  manhood, 
found  himself  a  free  man  in  the  tribal  life  of  this  Israel  of 
God.  He  sat  at  the  same  table  with  the  master,  ate  of  the 
same  bread  and  drank  of  the  same  cup.  The  rapid  increase 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  205 

of  the  Christian  community  in  its  earlier  period  was  owing 
to  the  assimilation  of  the  slave  population.  The  church  did 
not  attempt  to  abolish  slavery  as  a  political  institution  of  the 
empire,  but  it  made  slavery  impossible  within  the  confines 
of  the  church.  It  did  not  have  one  church  for  slaves  and 
another  church  for  free  men,  as  was  the  custom  in  our  South- 
ern States  in  the  days  of  Negro  slavery,  but  it  incorporated 
into  its  membership  with  equal  alacrity  and  equal  indiffer- 
ence the  master  and  the  slave.  Within  the  organization  it 
compelled  the  master  to  recognize  the  humanity  of  the  slaves 
and  the  slave  the  humanity  of  the  masters.  It  is  said :  "Sirs, 
ye  are  brothers,  ye  cannot  wrong  one  another." 

In  the  tribal  form  of  organization  the  women  were  far 
more  the  equals  of  the  men  than  they  were  in  the  later  agnatic 
family  and  political  organizations.  When  the  tribe  is  on  the 
march  the  women  must  walk  side  by  side  with  the  men,  they 
must  share  in  the  labors,  and  have  a  place  in  the  councils  of 
the  camp.  They  cannot  be  secluded  from  the  common  life ; 
their  only  restriction  is  that  they  stay  in  the  camp  while  the 
men  go  out  to  battle  but  this  restriction  is  swept  away  when 
the  battle  is  in  the  camp ;  then  the  women  fight  hand  to  hand 
with  more  than  the  fierceness  of  men  in  defence  of  their  young- 
The  tribal  form  of  organization  gave  great  liberty  to  women 
in  the  early  Christian  movement.  This  religion  recognized 
the  personality  of  woman  and  made  her  in  her  own  right  a 
partaker  in  the  common  salvation.  From  the  first  this  re- 
ligion had  a  great  attraction  for  women.  When  Paul 
preached,  we  are  told,  such  and  such  men  were  converted 
and  "devout  women  not  a  few." 

The  woman  never  became  a  bishop  in  the  church  nor  did 
she  occupy  the  seat  of  the  elder,  but  she  had  official  recogni- 
tion as  co-worker  in  the  administration  of  the  affairs  of  the 
church  with  the  bishop  and  elder.  In  the  warfare  of  the 
church  the  woman  held  the  first  rank  in  the  army  of  martyrs. 
It  was  the  women,  even  more  than  the  men,  who,  by  their 
fearless  confession  and  their  dauntless  death,  made  possible 
the  victory  of  the  church.  The  recognition  of  the  personality 
of  the  woman  came  as  a  gift  of  God  to  the  slave  women  of 


206  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

the  Roman  world;  when  such  a  woman  came  into  the  Chris- 
tian church  it  did  not  matter  that  her  body  had  been  out- 
raged by  her  master;  if  she  had  not  consented  to  the  outrage 
and  in  the  inner  shrine  of  her  soul  desired  purity,  then  she 
was  pure,  pure  as  the  proudest  matron  who  took  her  in  her 
arms  and  called  her  sister. 

In  the  tribal  organization  private  property  is  of  little  con- 
sequence. An  army  on  the  march  has  a  common  commis- 
sarat,  the  officers  and  the  men  sleep  on  the  ground  and  eat 
the  army  rations.  When  the  tribe  is  moving,  its  baggage  is 
light,  the  chief  and  the  tribesman  are  upon  a  near  equality. 
The  one  cannot  live  in  luxury  while  the  other  is  starving,  for 
that  is  fatal  to  the  tribal  life.  The  only  privilege  that  the 
chief  has  over  the  tribal  man  is  that  he  may  and  must  go 
before  the  tribal  man  in  the  battle ;  he  has  the  right  to  leader- 
ship ;  it  is  his  prerogative  to  be  the  first  to  die. 

The  early  Christian  movement  was  subject  to  these  rules 
of  the  tribal  life.  The  possessions  of  each  were  the  possessions 
of  all.  Private  property  was  subordinated  to  community 
need.  In  the  days  of  its  early  enthusiasm,  no  Christian  said 
"that  aught  of  the  things  that  he  possessed  were  his  own, 
but  they  held  all  things  common."  The  church  was  not 
socialistic  in  the  sense  of  modern  socialism,  because  produc- 
tion was  necessarily  individualistic;  hand  tools  made  of  each 
man  a  hand  worker,  and  anything  like  a  socialization  of  the 
process  or  the  product  of  labor  was  out  of  the  question. 

Nor  was  the  Christian  society  communistic  in  its  early 
period.  Communism  is  possible  only  when  the  community 
has  common  property  in  land.  Early  Christianity  was  the  re- 
ligion of  the  city  slave  and  artisan,  these  had  no  land  to  hold 
in  common  (that  came  later) ;  their  possessions  were  the 
pittance  of  the  slave  and  the  paltry  wage  of  the  free  worker. 
It  was  the  pooling  of  these  that  was  the  main  source  of  the 
wealth  of  the  church.  There  were  "not  many  nobles,  not 
many  rich,"  we  are  told,  in  that  body  of  men  and  women  who 
professed  and  called  themselves  Christians.  It  was  the  pen- 
nies of  the  poor  not  the  pounds  of  the  rich  that  financed  this 
army  of  the  Lord. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  207 

There  were  no  idlers  in  the  camp  to  consume  the  product 
of  the  workers ;  when  a  man  became  a  Christian  he  did  so 
at  the  risk  of  his  life  and  only  the  energetic  would  make  the 
great  adventure.  It  was  the  business  of  the  bishop  to  train 
the  youth  in  industry  and  to  watch  over  the  morals  of  the 
young.  In  the  course  of  its  evolution  the  church  elaborated 
a  system  of  discipline  that  made  idleness  and  wastefulness 
punishable  by  censure  and  exclusion  from  the  common  weal 
of  the  church. 

The  communion  of  the  saints  was  an  article  of  the  creed 
of  primitive  Christianity,  and  this  did  not  mean,  as  in  our 
day,  communion  only  in  the  spiritual  gifts  of  love  and  joy 
and  peace  in  the  Holy  Ghost  but  also  communion  in  the  gifts 
of  bread  and  wine  and  clothing  and  shelter.  The  Christian 
community  was  a  community  with  community  rights  and  not 
a  mere  aggregation  of  individuals. 

The  people  were  unified  by  a  common  danger  and  a  com- 
mon hope.  They  were  living  in  a  world  which  was  to  them 
a  desert  place  in  which  there  was  neither  bread  nor  water. 
The  mass  of  the  people  in  that  ancient  world  were  in  a  state 
of  chronic  starvation ;  they  never  had  enough  to  eat.  One 
cannot  read  the  early  literature  of  Christianity  without  feel- 
ing the  pangs  of  hunger.  Like  a  famishing  man  in  his  dream, 
it  dwells  on  great  clusters  of  grapes  and  fabulous  fields  of 
wheat.  Its  tree  of  life  bears  twelve  kinds  of  fruit  every 
month.  Its  thought  is  to  eat  and  to  drink  in  the  kingdom  of 
God.  When  the  day  of  God  comes  it  will  be  to  "fill  the 
hungry  with  good  things." 

Starvation  and  slavery  were  the  haunting  dread  of  human 
life  to  the  millions  who  lived  in  the  cities  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, in  the  days  of  the  decline.  It  was  this  dread  that  drove 
men  together  in  mutual  benefit  societies,  that  made  the  de- 
fenseless form  leagues  of  defense.  They  were  driven  to- 
gether as  the  sheep  on  the  wild  are  driven  together  by  the 
storm, — that  huddling  close  they  may  protect  one  another 
from  its  icy  death.  Christianity  was  the  sheepfold  giving 
shelter  to  these  victims  of  the  wind  and  the  rain.  It  was 
the  armed  camp  with  its  sentries  guarding  those  within  from 


208  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

foes  without.  It  was  the  congregation  of  Christus,  the  Son 
of  the  Tent  God  of  Israel,  who  had  come  at  his  Father's 
command  to  rescue  his  people  and  bring  them  out  of  the 
house  of  their  bondage  into  the  land  of  promise.  All  that 
ancient  Israel  had  dreamed  the  Christian  hoped  to  attain  at 
the  coming  of  Christus  his  god,  and  for  that  coming,  with 
a  faith  that  survived  a  thousand  disappointments,  he  watched 
and  waited  even  as  they  that  watch  for  the  morning. 

Blessed  illusion !  While  the  Christian  watched  and  waited, 
he  made  for  himself  the  Kingdom  of  God  that  he  longed  for, 
a  kingdom  in  which  the  slave  was  as  free  as  the  master,  the 
woman  the  equal  of  the  man ;  wherein  the  strong  were  the 
protectors  of  the  weak,  and  the  rich  became  as  the  poor.  That 
spiritual  Jerusalem  was  as  a  city  at  unity  with  itself,  and  to 
it  came  the  tribes  of  the  earth  to  worship  Christus,  the  Son 
of  Jehovah,  the  King  and  the  Keeper  of  the  City  of  God. 


CHAPTER  XLV 
Christus,  the  Son  of  Jehovah  the  Righteous 

The  persecution  of  the  worshippers  of  Christus  by  the 
Roman  Government,  the  hatred  of  his  followers  by  the  Roman 
populace,  calls  for  explanation.  As  we  know,  the  Roman 
Government  was  tolerant  of  all  religions  and  hospitable  to 
all  gods,  and  with  the  people  religious  variety  was  the  spice 
of  life.  The  cult  of  every  known  god,  except  Christus,  was 
cultivated  in  the  City  of  Rome  with  impunity  and  ardor. 
The  priests  of  Isis  made  the  proudest  matrons  of  Rome  the 
victims  of  their  lust;  Heliogabalus,  the  sun  god  of  Syria, 
made  sodomites  of  the  young  men  of  the  city.  Every  de- 
pravity which  the  corrupt  imagination  could  conceive  was 
freely  practiced  under  the  guise  of  religion  with  the  connivance 
if  not  with  the  consent  of  the  authorities.  Only  the  God 
Christus  was  singled  out  for  censure  and  his  followers  sub- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  209 

ject  to  punishment.  What  makes  this  the  more  strange  is  that 
these  victims  of  Roman  rage  were  an  obscure,  harmless  folk: 
they  were  not  fierce  like  the  Jews,  stirring  up  rebellion  against 
the  city,  they  were  quiet  and  submissive  and  did  not  resent 
the  greatest  injuries;  they  were  for  the  most  part  the  off- 
scouring  of  the  people,  slaves  and  converted  criminals- 
Pliny  the  Younger,  writing  of  them  to  the  Emperor  Trajan, 
said:  that  the  only  facts  which  he  could  discover  were  that 
they  had  a  custom  of  meeting  together  before  daylight  and 
singing  a  hymn  to  one  Christus  as  God.  They  were  bound 
together  by  no  unlawful  sacraments,  but  only  under  mutual 
obligation  not  to  commit  theft,  adultery,  robbery  or  fraud.1 

It  was  such  a  people  as  this  that  the  Roman  Government 
pursued  with  relentless  rigor  for  more  than  two  centuries ; 
they  were  beaten  with  rods,  imprisoned,  beheaded,  thrown 
to  the  lions,  and  burned  at  the  stake.  And  this  violence  was 
not  the  consequence  of  sporadic  outbreaks,  but  was  the  set- 
tled policy  of  the  government.  The  vilest  and  the  most 
virtuous  of  the  emperors  agreed  in  their  detestation  of  the 
religion  of  Christus  and  put  his  followers  to  torture  and 
death.  Nero  was  no  more  bitter  nor  cruel  in  this  respect 
than  was  Trajan,  and  Marcus  Aurelius  was  as  severe  as 
Domitian. 

The  priests  of  the  various  temples  were  not  slow  to  in- 
flame the  wrath  of  the  rulers  and  to  excite  the  fears  of  the 
populace.  By  imperial  decree  and  popular  tumult  the  fol- 
lowers of  Christus,  called  Christians,  were  in  constant  dan- 
ger of  death. 

And  this  was  no  mere  madness  on  the  part  of  the  estab- 
lished authorities  in  religion  and  politics;  the  emperors  and 
the  pontiffs  had  reason  to  fear  this  new,  strange  god  who  had 
made  his  entrance  so  silently,  so  mysteriously  into  their 
city.  This  simple,  harmless  people  who  were  called  after 
his  name  were  not  so  simple  nor  so  harmless  as  they  seemed. 
In  the  purlieus  of  the  slave  markets  and  in  the  outlying 
graveyards,  wherever  Christians  met  together,  forces  were 

1  Millman,    "Christianity,"    vol.    ii,    p.    93:    John    Murray,    London, 
1867. 


210        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

generated  that  were  destructive  of  the  system  under  which 
emperors  and  priests  lived  and  ruled.  All  other  gods  that 
found  refuge  in  Rome  were  submissive  to  Divus  Caesar,  the 
God  of  the  Organization ;  only  the  God  Christus  denied  him. 
And  it  was  this  denial  which  was  the  all-sufficient  crime 
calling  for  the  extermination  of  this  god  and  the  destruction 
of  his  following. 

Christus  denied  the  right  of  the  Emperor  to  rule  the  peo- 
ple. His  rule,  founded  as  it  was  upon  physical  force,  was 
an  outrage  to  the  soul  of  man.  Christus  made  the  soul  of 
man  a  sovereignty ;  each  man  was  answerable  only  to  his 
own  soul,  which  was  the  seat  of  the  living  God.  In  the  em- 
perors and  the  priests  Christus  saw  not  the  benefactors  but 
the  oppressors  of  the  people,  who  laid  upon  their  shoulders 
heavy  burdens  and  grievous  to  be  borne,  which  these  favor- 
ites of  the  existing  system  would  not  lift  with  one  of  their 
fingers.  In  the  thought  of  Christus  all  rule  of  man  over  man 
was  an  outrage  upon  humanity.  In  his  conception  of  gov- 
ernment rulership  gave  place  to  leadership  and  mastery  to 
service.  They  who  were  great  in  the  community  were  to  be 
the  servants  of  the  community;  they  were  to  occupy  not  the 
place  of  safety  but  the  post  of  danger. 

Christus  was  horrified  to  see  emperors  housed  in  palaces 
while  the  people  perished  from  the  cold;  it  was  sacrilege  that 
the  rulers  should  riot  in  luxury  while  the  people  starved  for 
want  of  bread.  In  the  thought  of  Christus  social  forces  or- 
ganized into  government  were  divine,  to  be  used  only  for  the 
good  of  the  people.  The  prostitution  of  these  forces  by  the 
ruling  class  to  gratify  their  lusts  and  their  cruelties  was  to 
this  god  an  unspeakable  profanation ;  the  abomination  of 
desolation  in  the  Holy  Place.  Such  rule  founded  upon  force 
and  not  upon  consent  was  as  the  rape  of  a  woman,  a  deed 
of  shame,  destructive  of  love  and  life.  To  make  such  rule 
impossible  in  the  earth  was  the  fixed  purpose  of  the  God 
Christus.  The  emperors  and  the  priests  made  no  mistake  in 
the  war  which  they  carried  on  from  generation  to  generation 
against  this  god  and  his  people. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  211 

Not  only  did  Christus  dispute  their  rule  but  he  denied  as 
well  the  validity  of  their  laws.  He,  as  the  incarnate  son  of 
Jehovah  The  Righteous,  opposed  his  righteousness  to  their 
legalities.  According  to  Roman  legalities  one  man  could 
own  another  man  as  his  private  property  and  the  master 
could  and  did  live  on  the  unrequited  labor  of  the  slave.  If  the 
slave  ran  away,  the  master  pursued  him  with  dogs,  and  if  he 
resisted  arrest,  he  was  crucified ;  the  slave  girl,  if  she  resented 
the  lust  of  her  master,  was  strangled  and  thrown  to  the  fishes. 
A  world  in  which  such  horrors  could  happen  was  to  Christus 
a  lost  world, — doomed  to  destruction. 

This  legalized  system  of  slavery  could  not  and  cannot  sur- 
vive the  heat  of  the  wrath  of  a  righteous  god.  The  conten- 
tion of  righteousness  against  legality  will  go  on  and  must  go 
on  until  legality  becomes  righteousness  and  righteousness 
legality. 

The  laws  of  the  land  which  give  the  land  to  the  few  to 
the  exclusion  of  the  many,  which  acknowledged  legal  owner- 
ship based  upon  title  deeds,  to  the  hurt  of  natural  owner- 
ship based  upon  occupation  and  use,  was  iniquity  in  the 
sight  of  Christus,  Son  of  Jehovah  The  Righteous.  In  his 
conception  the  ownership  of  land  is  in  Jehovah,  who  holds 
it  in  trust  for  the  people;  the  land  is  for  the  people  and  the 
people  for  the  land.  It  was  so  in  the  days  of  Joshua,  the  son 
of  Nun ;  it  is  so  in  the  days  of  Jesus,  the  son  of  Joseph. 

To  Christus  it  was  a  foul  injustice  that  woman  should  be 
subject  to  a  different  moral  standard  from  that  observed  by 
man,  that  she  should  be  stoned  for  her  adultery  while  he 
gloried  in  his  sin.  In  the  eyes  of  Christus  woman  was  a  soul 
as  well  as  a  sex.  She,  in  the  right  of  her  soul,  was  entitled 
to  her  place  side  by  side  with  man  in  all  the  affairs  of  life. 
If  he  were  king,  she  was  queen ;  they  were  to  sit  side  by  side 
upon  their  thrones  ruling  their  common  domain. 

The  God  Christus  was  a  revolutionary  god,  having  in 
mind  the  overthrow  of  the  pillars  of  ancient  society,  which 
were  imperial  rule,  human  slavery,  private  unlimited  owner- 
ship of  land,  and  the  subjection  of  women.  Christus  decreed 
democracy,  the  freedom  of  the  slave,  the  redemption  of  the 


212  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

land,  and  the  emancipation  of  the  woman ;  and  for  these 
things  he  was  hated  and  pursued  to  his  death  by  the  emperors 
and  the  masters  of  the  slaves,  the  lands,  and  the  women  of  the 
ancient  world. 

And  besides  all  this,  Christus  was  the  sworn  enemy  of  all 
priesthoods.  The  temples  with  their  sacrifices  of  bulls  and 
goats  were  an  abomination  to  him,  the  priests  with  their  dron- 
ing prayers  were  to  him  as  fools  making  merchandise  of  their 
own  folly.  What  they  called  the  service  of  God  was  in  the 
eyes  of  Christus  the  service  of  evil.  The  substance  of  the 
people  was  taken  to  build  houses  for  the  gods  which  the  gods 
could  not  live  in  and  the  meat  of  the  people  was  brought  to  the 
table  of  the  priest  where  the  gods  could  not  eat.  The  whole 
system  of  religion,  Jew  and  Gentile,  as  it  existed  in  his  day 
was  to  him  nothing  but  a  contrivance  by  which  the  priests 
exploited  the  people ;  and  this  was  the  all-sufficient  reason 
why  the  priests  hated  Christus  and  Christus  hated  the  priests. 
He  was  the  son  of  that  God  who  did  not  live  in  temples  made 
with  hands,  who  did  not  eat  bull's  flesh  nor  drink  the  blood  of 
goats,  who  did  not  require  that  his  people  should  tread  his 
courts.  What  he  asked  of  them  was  that  they  should  judge  the 
fatherless  and  plead  the  cause  of  the  widow ;  that  they  should 
feed  the  hungry,  clothe  the  naked,  shelter  the  homeless,  visit 
the  sick,  comfort  the  prisoner,  do  justly,  love  mercy,  and  walk 
humbly  with  their  God,  who  was  a  Spirit  to  be  worshipped  in 
spirit  and  in  truth. 

Such  doctrine  could  not  but  make  the  ancient  world  afraid, 
for  it  meant  the  destruction  of  that  legalized  kingdom  of 
man's  making,  that  it  might  give  place  to  the  righteous  king- 
dom of  God's  creating.  The  antagonism  between  Christus 
and  the  Roman  Caesar  was  the  natural  consequence  of  antag- 
onistic ideals. 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  213 

CHAPTER  XLVI 
Christus,  the  Son  of  the  Holy  One  of  Israel 

That  wonderful  institution,  the  Christian  church,  came  into 
being  to  preserve  men  and  women  from  the  depravity  of  the 
world.  In  the  thought  of  the  followers  of  the  god  Christus 
the  Graeco-Roman  civilization  in  the  midst  of  which  they 
lived  was  not  only  terribly  unjust,  it  was  also  horribly  un- 
clean. This  uncleanness  was  not  such  that  it  could  be  washed 
away  in  the  bath,  it  must  be  purified  by  fire.  This  sense  of 
physical  and  moral  impurity  was  not  a  creation  of  the  Chris- 
tian movement,  it  was  an  efficient  cause  of  the  success  of  that 
movement.  The  feeling  of  uncleanness  made  the  whole  world 
miserable.  In  spite  of  the  public  baths  and  the  abundant  pri- 
vate baths  in  the  homes  of  the  wealthy,  the  ancient  city,  even 
more  than  the  modern,  was  the  haunt  of  physical  impurity. 
The  very  conditions  under  which  the  mass  of  the  people 
lived  prevented  cleanliness. 

The  walled  city  of  the  ancient  and  medieval  world  was 
almost  of  necessity  the  breeding-place  of  physical  vileness: 
the  narrow  streets,  the  ill-ventilated  houses  barred  the  sun- 
light and  vitiated  the  air.  The  people,  crowded  into  close 
quarters  without  adequate  sanitary  provision,  were  the  vic- 
tims of  vermin  and  contagious  diseases.  Plagues  and  fevers 
were  the  natural  consequence  of  this  unnatural  mode  of  life, 
and  men  and  women  died  of  them  by  the  hundreds  and  the 
thousands  year  by  year.  Our  modern  cities,  bad  as  they  are, 
are  a  paradise  of  cleanliness  when  compared  with  the  ancient 
and  medieval  city.  Diseases  common  in  those  cities  are  al- 
most unknown  to  us.  As  we  go  out  of  our  city  into  the  sur- 
rounding country  we  never  hear  the  leper's  bell  nor  the 
leper's  warning  cry;  "Unclean,  unclean!" 

The  low  estate  of  medical  knowledge  gave  to  this  un- 
cleanness a  power  and  a  horror  of  which,  happily,  we  know 
nothing.  Remedies  viler  than  the  sickness  were  prescribed 
by  physicians  whose  ignorance  was  only  equaled  by  their 


214        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

cupidity.  Philters  were  concocted,  charms  were  devised,  to 
the  delusion  of  the  sick  man.  The  priests  were  not  back- 
ward with  their  prayers  and  incantations  to  drive  the  devils 
out  of  the  tortured  body.  Sickness  was  ascribed  to  the  pres- 
ence of  a  foul  fiend,  the  expulsion  of  which  was  necessary  to 
a  cure.  Venereal  and  nervous  afflictions  made  their  victims 
blind  and  crazy,  and  as  these  poor  creatures  were  not  cared 
for  by  the  state,  being  for  the  most  part  slaves,  they  made 
the  streets  and  the  highways  pestilent  with  their  beggary 
and  their  shamelessness. 

Civilization  has  always  been  unclean;  humanity  crowded 
in  cities  creates  the  foulness  that  destroys  it.  A  pig  running 
at  large  in  the  forest  is  as  clean  an  animal  as  one  would  wish 
to  see,  a  pig  in  a  pen  is  filthy;  but  the  pig  is  not  to  blame 
for  that  filthiness, — it  is  the  pen. 

Not  only  was  the  ancient  city  physically  unclean,  it  was 
morally  vile  as  well.  Abuse  of  the  appetites  was  prevalent 
and  destructive  of  all  that  made  human  life  decent  and  toler- 
able. The  existence  in  every  city  of  a  large  slave  population, 
living  in  promiscuity  and  yielding  themselves  without  resist- 
ance to  the  vicious  desires  of  their  masters,  made  possible  a 
condition  of  moral  depravity  such  as  we  at  present  cannot  so 
much  as  comprehend.  Our  cities  are  bad  enough,  but  in 
gluttony,  in  drunkenness,  and  in  lechery,  such  cities  as  Rome 
and  Antioch  in  the  days  of  their  decay  were  to  our  cities  as 
hell  to  heaven.  In  one  respect  they  may  have  been  better 
than  we;  they  were  not  hypocrites,  hiding  their  shame  be- 
hind a  curtain  of  sanctimoniousness:  what  they  did  they  did 
in  the  open,  and  their  shame  was  their  glory.  We  have  in 
the  "Satires"  of  Juvenal,  in  the  "Poems"  of  Ovid,  in  the  "His- 
tory" of  Suetonius  and  the  "Annals"  of  Tacitus,  ample  evi- 
dence of  a  moral  condition  sufficient  to  turn  the  heart  of  a 
decent  man  cold  with  loathing,  and  to  make  the  world  an  unfit 
place  for  a  decent  woman  to  live  in. 

It  was  this  physical  and  moral  uncleanness  that  gave  to  the 
Christian  movement  that  principle  of  separation  which  made 
of  its  people  a  peculiar  people,  living  apart,  hating  and  hated 
by  the  world  from  which  they  had  withdrawn.  The  antag- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  215 

onism  of  the  church  and  the  world  which  is  written  on  every 
page  of  history,  sacred  and  profane,  since  the  advent  of  Chris- 
tianity, was  the  necessary  outcome  of  that  conception  of  sin 
and  holiness  which  possessed  the  mind  of  the  primitive  world. 

Ignorant  of  the  natural  causes  of  sickness  and  moral  de- 
pravity, the  primitive  mind  ascribed  these  evils  to  the  direct 
action  of  the  gods.  It  was  from  the  gods  that  the  sickness 
came,  it  was  to  the  gods  that  the  sick  must  look  for  deliver- 
ance. The  anger  of  the  gods  was  aroused  by  the  neglect  of 
men.  If  man  did  not  worship  the  gods  aright,  the  gods  visited 
them  with  the  plague  and  the  pestilence.  Each  god  had  his 
own  particular  province  in  which  he  gave  expression  to  his 
good  will  and  his  anger.  The  domestic  gods  were  the  keepers 
of  domestic  virtue ;  they  punished  the  adultery  of  the  wife  and 
the  disobedience  of  the  children  by  causing  the  heir  of  the 
house  to  die  of  the  plague.  When  the  Pater-familias  was  at 
odds  with  the  gods  they  cursed  his  cattle  with  barrenness  and 
beat  down  his  harvest  with  the  hail.  The  neglect  of  the  city 
gods  was  avenged  by  the  pestilence  and  the  abandonment  of 
the  city  to  its  foes.  It  was  the  sin  of  Israel  against  the  god 
of  Israel  that  was  the  cause  of  the  calamities  of  Israel. 

So  there  arose  in  the  heart  of  man  that  sense  of  sin  as 
separating  between  him  and  his  god  which,  for  good  and  for 
evil,  has  played  so  great  a  part  in  his  spiritual  life.  In  this 
way  the  primitive  mind  ascribed  physical  illness  to  spiritual 
agencies  and  looked  upon  the  physical  creation  itself  as  es- 
sentially unclean  and  the  cause  of  uncleanness  in  the  soul  of 
man.  The  sin  of  the  world  was  the  destruction  of  the  world ; 
only  by  escaping  from  the  world  could  the  soul  be  delivered 
from  the  damnation  under  which  the  world  rested. 

Because  of  this,  the  followers  of  the  God  Christus  were 
called  upon  to  forsake  the  world  that  they  might  become  a 
holy  people  acceptable  to  the  Lord. 

This  quality  of  holiness,  which  was  one  of  the  essentials 
of  the  early  Christian  movement,  gave  to  it  a  power  which 
no  other  propaganda  at  the  time  possessed.  Its  cry  to  the 
people  was :  "Come,  wash  and  be  clean !"  Its  initiatory  cere- 


216        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

mony  was  a  bath;  it  offered  cleanliness  as  a  free  gift;  the 
only  pre-requisite  was  the  desire  to  be  clean.  "Come,  wash 
you  and  make  you  clean!"  was  a  welcome  invitation  to  souls 
and  bodies  soiled  and  sick  of  the  soil. 

Christus  was  a  clean  god;  he  was  not  city-born,  he  came 
from  the  country-side,  washed  in  the  dew  of  the  morning 
and  fragrant  with  the  scent  of  the  new-mown  hay.  Men 
saw  in  him  the  purity  of  the  rain  and  the  cleanness  of  the 
sunlight. 

His  followers  ascribed  to  this  god  an  extravagant  moral 
perfection ;  they  said  he  was  a  god  without  sin ;  in  him  there 
was  no  guile,  neither  was  sin  found  in  his  mouth.  His  sin- 
lessness  was  a  miracle;  it  was  an  attribute  of  his  divinity. 
He  did  not  sin,  because  he  could  not  sin.  In  these  claims 
the  followers  of  Christus  overshot  the  mark.  They  made 
of  him  a  prodigy,  they  removed  him  out  of  the  sphere  of 
moral  experience,  they  imperiled  his  humanity, — and  a  god 
without  humanity  is  no  god  for  man. 

For  the  time  being  this  exaggeration  served  its  purpose. 
Men  worshipped  sinlessness,  they  made  moral  cleanness  a 
passion  of  the  soul.  In  their  eager  reaction  against  the  evil 
of  their  times,  these  worshippers  of  Christus  went  to  a  far 
extreme,  they  made  appetite  itself  a  sin.  To  eat  and  to 
drink  and  to  love  was  an  evil,  displeasing  to  Christus  and 
the  occasion  of  death  to  the  soul.  To  fast  and  to  weep  and 
to  pray,  to  scourge  the  body  in  the  interests  of  the  spirit,  be- 
came the  ideal  of  the  Christian  life. 

The  people  were  set  to  practice  an  impossible  holiness 
which  was  sure  to  result  in  a  vicious  reaction.  But  so  it  is 
with  this  poor  human  nature  of  ours ;  it  swings  from  extreme 
to  extreme  and  by  so  swinging  it  moves  the  hands  of  the 
clock  of  progress  and  brings  the  world  little  by  little  to  the 
golden  mean  which  Aristotle  tells  us,  is  the  seat  of  virtue. 

The  worship  of  Christus, — the  Son  of  the  Holy  One,  the 
One  who  is  high  and  lifted  up,  who  shares  man's  sorrows  but 
not  his  sin,  in  whose  eyes  the  stars  are  unclean,— was  the 
inevitable  reaction  from  the  worship  of  the  old  nature  gods 
by  a  depraved  city  people.  The  nature  gods  can  be  wor- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  217 

shipped  with  safety  only  in  the  midst  of  nature:  the  god  of 
the  sky  under  the  sky,  the  god  of  the  harvest  in  the  fields 
of  the  harvests,  the  god  of  the  vine  where  the  grapes  are  in 
cluster,  the  god  of  fecundity  where  children  are  welcomed. 

These  gods  when  carried  into  the  city,  lose  their  fresh- 
ness and  their  innocence;  they  become  corrupt  and  corrupt- 
ing. They  change  the  desire  for  children  into  a  lust  for 
women,  they  make  of  eating  gluttony,  and  of  drinking  drunk- 
enness. The  farmer,  after  a  hard  day's  work,  can  drink  the 
pure  wine  of  his  own  making  and  be  glad  of  heart ;  he  can  eat 
freely  of  the  bread  of  his  own  baking  and  be  satisfied,  and 
beget  sons  and  daughters  and  be  the  more  vigorous  for  his 
lawful  indulgence.  But  in  the  city,  if  he  is  rich  and  able,  he 
will  be  tempted  to  eat  for  the  sake  of  eating,  to  drink  for  the 
pleasure  of  drinking,  and  to  love  for  the  sensation  of  loving. 
His  appetite  will  grow  by  that  which  it  feeds  upon  until  he 
becomes  a  glutton  and  a  lecher.  Country  gods  aje  for  the 
country-side;  they  are  dangerous  to  the  morals  of  the  city- 
It  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  religious  history  that  Jesus  ben 
Joseph,  the  man  of  the  country-side,  should  have  become  the 
reforming  god  of  the  city.  He, — who,  in  the  days  of  his  flesh, 
was  a  free  liver,  called  by  his  enemies  a  gluttonous  man  and 
a  wine-bibber,  a  friend  of  harlots  and  a  companion  of  sin- 
ners,— became  by  a  process  of  deification  the  god  of  the  city 
ascetic,  the  god  of  the  man  who  sought  to  save  his  soul  by 
starving  his  body,  and  to  maintain  his  purity  by  renouncing 
his  manhood. 

Holiness  at  the  best  is  a  negative  quality;  it  saves  men 
and  gods  by  secluding  them.  The  moon  is  chaste  because  the 
moon  is  alone ;  a  saint  on  a  pillar  is  a  saint  on  a  pillar.  Jesus 
ben  Joseph  lost  much  of  his  power  over  humanity  when  as 
a  god  he  sat  down  at  the  right  hand  of  the  Majesty  of  The 
Holy  One  of  Israel. 


218        THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

CHAPTER  XLVII 
The  Worship  of  Christus  in  the  Primitive  Church 

It  came  to  pass  one  day  in  the  month  of  August  many 
years  ago  that  I  was  walking  at  noontide  down  the  Via 
Appia,  in  the  City  of  Rome.  This  once  famous  thoroughfare 
had  long  since  ceased  to  be  the  resort  of  the  people  or  the 
highway  of  traffic. 

In  the  days  of  Roman  greatness  the  Via  Appia  was 
thronged  with  chariots  carrying  the  Roman  patrician  to  and 
from  his  villa  in  the  country;  to  and  from  his  house  in  the 
city;  fashionable  women  lolled  in  their  litters,  with  their 
sandaled  feet  exposed  to  attract  the  eye  of  the  Roman  gal- 
lant; merchants  with  their  wares,  physicians  with  their 
philters,  stood  by  the  roadside  calling  to  the  people  to  buy; 
slaves  bending  under  their  burdens  were  carrying  goods  from 
Rome  to  Capua,  and  from  Capua  to  Rome ;  gladiators  were 
marching  from  the  pens  in  the  Campania  to  the  Circus  in  the 
city.  In  the  good  old  days  one  had  but  to  stand  on  the  road- 
side of  the  Via  Appia  to  see  all  Rome  pass  by. 

But  on  that  midday  in  August  I  saw  nothing  but  a  donkey- 
cart  with  a  sleeping  driver  going  slowly  towards  the  Cam- 
pania and  lizards  running  along  the  wall.  It  was  as  lonely, 
as  desolate,  and  as  dull  under  that  noonday  sun  as  it  was 
wont  to  be  thronged  and  alive  and  amusing  twenty  centuries 
before. 

Making  my  way  past  the  tombs  of  the  patricians  which 
line  the  roads  for  miles  out  of  Rome,  I  came  to  the  church 
St.  Sylvester,  and  with  a  guide  entered  the  Catacombs.  We 
followed  the  winding  way  of  this  subterranean  burial  place 
until  we  came  to  the  Chapel  of  St.  Sixtus. — a  large  chamber 
cut  out  of  the  volcanic  rock  as  a  place  of  worship  for  the 
Christian  people  in  the  days  of  their  greatness.  It  was  in 
these  catacombs  that  the  worshippers  of  Christus  laid  their 
dead,  to  await  the  coming  of  their  God, — when  the  dead 
should  hear  his  voice  and  live.  These  catacombs  were  the 
sleeping  chambers  of  the  saints  until  they  should  awake  in 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  219 

the  morning  of  their  resurrection.  Into  these  catacombs  the 
living  came  to  meet  their  god.  There  was  no  difference  be- 
tween the  dead  and  the  living  in  the  thought  of  this  people 
of  Christus,  only  this:  that  the  living  were  awake  and  the 
dead  were  sleeping  in  Jesus,  the  Christus  of  God. 

The  living  cut  out  from  the  rock  the  Chapel  of  St.  Sixtus 
and  the  Chapel  of  St.  Callixtus  and  set  their  altars  there  to 
offer  upon  them  an  unbloody  sacrifice, — holy,  acceptable  to 
the  Lord.  It  was  with  these  passageways  through  the  earth 
as  it  was  with  the  Via  Appia  above, — once  they  had  been 
crowded  with  Christians  bringing  their  dead  to  burial,  or 
coming  with  flowers  to  the  tombs  of  their  friends,  and  to 
worship  in  the  chapels  by  the  way.  On  that  afternoon  in 
August  I  was  alone  with  the  guide,  not  even  a  tourist  dis- 
turbed the  solitude  of  those  chambers  of  the  dead. 

As  I  stood  in  the  Chapel  of  St.  Sixtus  in  the  Catacombs 
I  thought  of  another  chapel  of  another  Sixtus  in  the  Palace 
of  the  Vatican.  The  contrast  was  great,  and  we  will  bear 
that  contrast  in  mind  as  we  follow  the  progress  of  the  God 
Christus  from  the  days  of  his  greatness  in  the  Catacombs  to 
the  days  of  his  decline  in  the  Palace. 

Here  at  this  little  stone  table  in  his  chapel  on,  as  it  were, 
the  4th  of  August  in  the  year  258  A.  D.,  Sixtus  II,  bishop  of 
Rome,  was  breaking  bread  for  his  people.  Between  him  and 
the  people  there  was  no  difference,  except  that  he  was  the 
father  and  they  his  children.  His  dress  was  as  the  dress 
of  a  common  man;  it  would  have  been  abomination  on  the 
lips  to  call  him  by  the  heathen  title  Pontifex  Maximus,  or 
His  Holiness,  or  any  other  name  except  Father  and  Overseer 
or  Bishop.  He  was  a  follower  of  Jesus  the  Christus,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  congregation  of  the  saints,  with  no  privilege  above 
his  brethren  save  the  privilege  to  die  for  them.  And  that 
privilege  he  enjoyed  that  day.  For  as  he  stood  at  the  table 
of  the  Lord  breaking  bread  for  the  people  of  the  Lord,  the 
soldiers  of  the  emperor  Valerian  came  and  took  him  away; 
and  on  the  sixth  day  of  August  in  that  selfsame  year,  Sixtus 
II,  Bishop  of  Rome,  died  under  the  hand  of  the  executioner 
— a  saint  and  a  martyr  of  the  church. 


220  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

As  I  stood  in  the  chapel  and  recalled  this  event  and  studied 
the  Christian  memorials  around  me,  I  could  not  help  seeing 
and  feeling  how  entirely  the  Christus  was  the  God  of  the 
Catacombs.  His  sacred  symbols,  the  fish  and  the  lamb,  on 
every  side ;  his  sacred  sign  of  the  cross  sealed  every  door  of 
every  tomb ;  the  Greek  letters  of  his  monograph, — I.H.S., — 
which  were  interpreted  by  the  Roman  to  mean  Jesus  Hominis 
Salvator,  Jesus,  the  Saviour  of  Man.  There  was  no  sign 
of  any  other  god  to  be  seen  other  than  the  sign  of  the 
God  Christus.  The  glory  of  the  Father  was  lost  in  the 
nearer  glory  of  the  Son.  Men  might  fear  the  Father,  but 
they  loved  the  Son.  They  loved  him,  for  he  was  even  such 
an  one  as  themselves.  He  had  been  a  working  man  as  most 
of  them  were  working  men ;  he  had  been  of  a  despised  and 
rejected  race,  even  as  they  were  a  despised  and  rejected  class, 
he  had  been  oppressed  and  afflicted,  even  as  they  were  op- 
pressed and  afflicted ;  he  had  rebelled  against  the  injustice 
of  the  world,  even  as  they  were  rebelling.  Down  in  the 
Catacombs  they  were  singing  their  revolutionary  songs:  "He 
shall  put  down  the  mighty  from  their  seat  and  exalt  the 
humble  and  weak."  "He  hath  filled  the  hungry  with  good 
things  and  the  rich  he  hath  sent  empty  away.'*  They  were 
exhorting  one  another  to  watch  and  wait  for  His  coming, 
when  the  powers  of  heaven  should  be  shaken,  when  the  sun 
should  be  darkened  and  the  moon  turned  into  blood,  when 
the  elements  should  melt  with  fervent  heat  and  out  of  this 
burning,  fiery  furnace  should  walk  Christus,  the  Son  of  Man, 
not  a  hair  of  his  head  singed,  not  the  smell  of  smoke  in  his 
garments ;  who  by  the  power  of  his  word  should  out  of  the 
melting  elements  of  that  old  world,  drunk  with  the  blood  of 
the  saints,  mould  a  new  world,  informed  with  his  righteous- 
ness and  possessed  by  his  people.  ^ 

It  did  not  take  long,  standing  there  in  the  darkness,  ligtitecl 
by  the  torch  of  the  monkish  guide,  to  see  that  Christus  was 
a  great  God  in  the  days  of  the  Catacombs, — a  God  for  whom 
men  would  forsake  father  and  mother  and  wife  and  children 
and  house  and  land ;  a  God  for  whom  men  would  gladly  and 
eagerly  die ;  a  God  of  whom  men  asked  nothing  but  that  he 


221 

would  wash  them  and  make  them  clean ;  a  God  for  whom 
a  prince  would  forget  his  nobility  and  sit  beside  the  beggar 
on  the  wayside ;  a  God  for  whom  a  beggar  would  cast  off  his 
degradation  and  become  rich  with  the  unsearchable  riches  of 
Christus.  This  was  a  God  to  be  reckoned  with  above  all 
gods  of  the  bed  and  the  gate  and  the  fire;  he  had  a  strength 
beyond  the  god  of  the  sky  and  the  earth  and  the  water;  he 
was  more  powerful  than  all  the  gods  of  the  cities;  mightier 
than  Divus  Caesar,  the  God  of  the  Organization,  for  he  was 
the  god  of  the  human  heart,  from  which  are  the  issues  of 
life  and  death. 

Down  there  in  the  Catacombs,  in  burying  places  and  caves 
of  the  earth  throughout  the  Roman  Empire  was  generated 
that  love  for  and  devotion  to  Christus  as  God, — a  devotion 
that  compelled  the  recognition  of  his  divinity,  made  his  church 
supreme  for  ten  centuries  in  Europe,  and  gave  his  name  to 
Western  civilization. 

This  worship  of  Jesus  was  not  based  in  reason,  it  had  its 
seat  in  the  emotions;  it  was,  in  this  earlier  period,  but  little 
troubled  by  theological  subtleties.  God  the  Father  was  to 
the  devout  Christian  of  the  Catacombs  but  little  more  than 
the  background  of  Christus  the  Son,  and  God  the  Spirit  was 
nothing  else  than  the  Spirit  of  Christus  abroad  in  the  world. 

The  religion  of  Christus  was  powerful  because  it  was  sim- 
ple. Believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus-Christus  and  be  saved  was 
its  creed ;  wash  in  the  waters  of  baptism  and  be  clean  was  its 
initiation ;  eat  of  the  bread,  which  is  the  body  of  Jesus  and 
live  with  Jesus  was  its  doctrine.  A  few  simple  facts  were 
all  that  the  Christian  neophyte  had  to  master  before  his 
discipleship.  The  birth,  the  death,  the  resurrection  of  Chris- 
tus was  the  heart  of  his  religion. 

With  this  simple  dogmatic  the  Church  went  to  the  lower 
orders  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  gave  them  a  supreme  object 
of  enthusiasm,  a  philosophy  of  history  that  the  most  child- 
like could  grasp,  and  an  undying  hope  to  keep  them  alive. 
To  love  Christus  was  the  beginning  of  life;  to  go  to  Christus 
the  end  of  life. 


222        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

And  the  worship  of  Christus  was  as  simple  as  its  doctrine. 
It  consisted,  as  Justin  Martyr  tells  us,  of  a  few  prayers,  the 
reading  and  the  explanation  of  the  Memoirs  of  Christus,  and 
the  breaking  of  bread  to  the  people  in  remembrance  of  the 
breaking  of  bread  by  the  Master  in  the  hour  of  his  betrayal, — 
simply  that  and  nothing  more-  No  priests  standing  before 
the  altars  in  chasuble,  bedecked  with  embroidery  and  be- 
gemmed with  jewels;  no  great  cathedral  with  vaulted  roof, 
no  music  of  Palestrina,  sung  by  women  and  men  and  boys 
trained  for  the  purpose.  Only  a  plain  man  in  the  plain 
clothes  of  the  people,  standing  before  a  table  hewn  out  of  the 
rock  by  the  people  themselves;  only  the  low  room  of  the 
Catacombs,  lighted  by  torches  that  the  people  carried ;  only 
the  songs  of  the  revolution,  sung  by  the  people  of  the  revolu- 
tion as  they  walked  in  and  out  and  round  about  through  all 
the  turnings  of  the  ways  between  their  dead. 

And  yet  this  great  people  were  not  without  a  wealth  of 
their  own,  as  was  proved  by  St.  Lawrence,  the  archdeacon 
of  Sixtus  II,  Bishop  of  Rome,  in  whose  chapel  I  was  medi- 
tating. 

There  I  remembered  that  when  the  soldiers  of  Valerian 
came  and  took  the  bishop  to  his  death  they  carried  away  the 
archdeacon  also,  as  a  prisoner,  and  brought  him  before  the 
Pretorian  Prefect  of  the  City  of  Rome.  Now  the  Prefect  of 
the  City  knew  that  the  archdeacon  of  the  church  was  the 
keeper  of  the  treasures  of  the  church,  and  the  Prefect  said  to 
the  archdeacon :  "Bring  me  the  treasures  of  the  Church  and 
you  shall  live;  refuse  and  you  shall  surely  die."  The  arch- 
deacon answered:  "Give  me  three  days,  my  lord,  and  I  will 
bring  the  riches  of  the  church  to  your  palace."  The  Prefect 
consented  and  the  archdeacon  went  his  way.  The  Prefect 
was  glad,  for  he  had  heard  that  the  church  was  very  rich. 

When  Lawrence,  the  archdeacon,  left  the  Palace  of  the 
Prefect,  he  made  haste  and  went  to  the  house  of  the  banker 
of  the  church,  and  asked  the  banker,  saying:  "How  much 
money  has  the  church  in  your  keeping?"  and  the  banker  an- 
swered saying:  "So  much,"  and  the  archdeacon  answered  the 
banker  saying:  "Send  so  much  to  the  Bishop  of  Vienne  in 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  223 

Gaul,  and  so  much  to  the  Bishop  of  Toledo  in  Hispania,  and 
so  much  to  the  Bishop  of  Carleon  in  Britain,  and  so  much  to 
the  Bishop  of  Carthage  in  Africa,  and  give  me  the  rest  in 
three  bags  for  myself."  And  the  banker  did  as  the  arch- 
deacon had  said,  and  when  he  had  finished  the  archdeacon 
spake  to  the  banker,  saying:  "Have  you  anything  left  of  the 
treasures  of  the  church?"  And  he  answered  and  said:  "Noth- 
ing." And  the  archdeacon  made  haste  and  went  out  into 
the  city  and  found  two  deacons  of  the  church  and  brought 
them  to  the  bank  and  gave  one  bag  of  money  to  the  one 
deacon  and  one  bag  of  money  to  the  other  deacon  and  car- 
ried one  bag  of  money  himself.  Then  with  a  deacon  on 
either  hand  the  archdeacon  Lawrence  went  down  into  the 
slums  of  the  City  of  Rome,  in  and  out  its  sordid  streets,  up 
and  down  the  rickety  steps  of  the  rickety  tenements,  knock- 
ing at  the  door  of  the  blind  Mopsuestia,  giving  her  of  the 
money  of  the  church  and  saying:  "Be  in  the  square  of  the 
palace  of  the  Pretorian  Prefect  at  such  an  hour  and  on  such 
a  day."  So  from  door  to  door,  with  his  deacons  beside  him, 
the  archdeacon  went,  giving  of  the  treasure  of  the  church  to 
the  halt  and  the  lame  and  the  aged,  until  all  the  money  was 
gone,  saying  to  each  as  he  gave :  "Be  in  the  square  of  the 
palace  of  the  Pretorian  Prefect  at  such  an  hour  and  on  such 
a  day." 

When  the  day  and  hour  arrived  the  archdeacon  stood  be- 
fore the  Prefect  and  the  Prefect  said:  "Where  are  the  treas- 
ures of  the  church?"  And  the  archdeacon  answered  and 
said :  "They  are  without,  my  lord,  in  the  square  of  the  palace 
of  the  Prefect  of  Rome."  Then  was  the  Prefect  glad  of  heart 
and  he  went  to  the  door  of  the  palace,  expecting  to  see  the 
square  crowded  with  wagons  bringing  the  treasures  of  the 
church,  and  he  saw,  as  it  were,  all  the  beggars  of  the  City 
of  Rome  in  the  square  of  the  palace  of  the  Prefect  of  the 
City  of  Rome.  Then  the  Prefect  turned  with  fury  and  said 
to  the  archdeacon : 

"What  meanest  thou  by  this?" 

"I  mean,"  answered  the  archdeacon,  "to  obey  my  lord,  and 
bring  to  him  the  treasures  of  the  church." 


224        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

And  the  Prefect  cried : 

"What!  callest  thou  these  the  riches  of  the  church?" 

And  the  archdeacon  answered  and  said : 

"Yea,  my  lord,  the  lives  of  the  people  are  the  wealth  of  the 
church." 

Therefore,  the  Prefect  was  angry  and  he  commanded  his 
soldiers  to  take  the  archdeacon  and  put  him  to  death.  And 
the  soldiers,  seeing  that  the  Prefect  was  very  wroth,  went 
and  made  a  great  gridiron  and  stripped  the  archdeacon  and 
bound  him  naked  to  the  gridiron  and  broiled  him  over  a  slow 
fire, — and  so  he  died. 

Thus  did  the  story  come  back  to  me  as  I  stood  in  the 
Chapel  of  St.  Sixtus  in  the  Catacombs  of  Rome,  and  I  came 
up  out  of  the  Catacombs  into  the  light  of  day,  and  it  was 
toward  evening;  for  the  day  was  far  spent;  and  I  went  my 
way  down  the  Via  Appia  to  the  church  of  St.  Paul  Without 
the  Gates ;  and  as  I  walked  I  saw  the  dome  of  Michaelangelo 
hanging  in  the  evening  sky,  and  I  looked  and  I  said:  "There 
is  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  but  what  has  become  of  the  God 
Christus,  and  where  are  his  people?" 


BOOK  VII 
THE  GODS  OF  THE  GREEK  DIALECTIC 


CHAPTER  XLVIII 
The  Gods  of  the  Greek  Dialectic 

When  we  look  for  the  God  Christus  after  his  religion, — 
by  reason  of  the  devotion  and  self  sacrifice  of  his  people, 
grown  rich  and  powerful  and  popular, — has  emerged  from 
the  darkness  of  the  Catacombs  into  the  light  of  the  upper 
world,  we  find  that  the  God  has  shared  in  the  elevation  of 
his  religion.  Christus  is  no  longer,  exclusively,  if  at  all,  the/ 
God  of  the  Working  Class,  bearing  their  griefs  and  sharing 
their  sorrows ;  He  is  in  process  of  becoming  the  God  of  the 
Leisure  Class  and  is  taking  his  seat  with  the  princes  of  the 
people.  He  is  no  longer  hid  from  the  wise  and  the  prudent 
and  revealed  only  unto  babes;  his  destiny  is  in  the  keeping 
of  the  wisdom  of  the  philosopher  and  the  prudence  of  the 
lawyer.  He  has  ceased,  or  almost  ceased,  to  be  an  object  of 
devotion,  and  has  become  a  principle  of  contention.  He  has 
left  the  lowly  places  of  religion  to  stand  in  the  storm-center 
of  theology.  He  is  no  longer  Christus,  the  Son  of  Jehovah, 
the  War  God  of  the  Bene-Israel,  nor  is  he  the  Sdh  of  Jehovah 
The  Righteous,  nor  yet  the  Son  of  The  Holy  One.  He  has 
become  the  Son  of  the  Absolute.  He  is  one  of  the  gods  of 
the  Greek  Dialectic. 

This  transformation  of  Christus  from  the  God  of  a  simple 
religion  into  the  God  of  an  abstruse  theology  was  as  inevit- 
able as  it  was  for  him  unfortunate.  When  he  left  his  native 
heath  in  Galilee  and  entered  into  the  Graeco-Roman  world, 
Christus  had  to  accommodate  himself  to  the  thought  of  that 
world  and  adjust  himself  to  its  policies. 

The  vitality  of  the  Christian  religion,  the  burning  zeal  of 
its  people,  its  moral  elevation,  its  definite  philosophy  of  his- 
tory, its  doctrine  of  resurrection  and  judgment,  made  a  pow- 
erful appeal  not  only  to  the  emotions  but  to  the  intelligence 

227 


228        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

of  the  men  and  the  women  to  whom  it  was  preached.  As 
compared  with  the  absurdity  of  the  Greek  Mythos,  wherein 
the  gods  were  mutilating  the  gods,  in  which  there  was  no 
hint  of  the  origin  of  the  world,  only  chaos  and  black  night 
at  a  beginning,  I  say,  in  comparison  with  this  indefiniteness 
and  absurdity  the  Christian  account  of  Creation  seemed  clear 
and  sane. 

When  the  morality  of  Zeus,  as  described  by  the  poets,  was 
set  side  by  side  with  the  morality  of  Jehovah  and  Christus, 
as  pictured  by  the  prophets  and  evangelists,  the  old  gods 
could  not  but  suffer  in  the  presence  of  the  new.  Men  and 
women  wearied  with  unbridled  indulgence  fled  from  the  pleas- 
ure-loving gods  of  the  Greeks  to  find  relief  in  the  ascetic  gods 
of  the  Hebrews,  f  ( / 

Early  in  its  history  the  religion  of  the  despised  Nazarene  | 
began  to  draw  into  the  circle  of  its  influence  the  best  minds 
as  well  as  the  noblest  souls  of  the  Mediterranean  world.  Jesus 
had  been  dead  hardly  ten  years  before  the  great  Rabbi, 
scholar,  and  thinker,  Saul  of  Tarsus,  ceased  to  persecute  and 
became  an  apostle  of  the  Lord.  The  influence,  direct  and  in- 
direct, of  this  mind  upon  the  character  and  the  fortunes  of  the 
religion  which  it  adopted  is  beyond  calculation.  Without 
Paul,  Christianity,  in  all  probability,  might  have  been  no 
more  than  the  passing  religion  of  an  obscure  Jewish  sect. 
When  Paul  was  once  converted  to  a  belief  in  Jesus, — that  he 
was  the  Christ, — he  melted  that  belief  in  the  fires  of  his  in- 
tense emotion  and  recast  it  in  the  mould  of  his  intelligence. 
Paul  lifted  Christus  and  his  religion  from  its  local  environment 
and  made  it  universal.  Jesus  ceased  to  be  a  Jew  crucified  to 
glut  the  hatred  of  the  Pharisee  and  to  quiet  the  fear  of  the 
Roman ;  he  became,  in  the  thought  of  Paul,  the  Lamb  of 
God  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the  world,  as  propitiation 
for  the  sin  of  the  world. 

Paul  took  the  folklore  of  the  Hebrew  scriptures  and  or- 
ganized it  into  a  theology.     Paul  himself  was  intellectually  \ 
the  child  of  the  Hebrew  Scripture  crossed  by  Greek  culture. 
The  Jehovah  of  the  Scriptures  was  in  his  mind  identified  with 
the  Absolute  of  Plato.     He  was  the  god  who  dwelt  in  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  229 

light  which  no  man  could  approach  unto.  Paul  took  the 
naive  Hebrew  philosophy  of  history  and  made  it  cosmic ;  he 
carried  it  far  back  of  the  mere  creation  of  the  heavens  and 
earth  into  the  inner  shrine  of  the  secret  counsels  of  God. 

If  Peter  was  the  founder  of  the  church,  Paul  was  the  father 
of  theology.  He  opened  the  door  that  made  the  Christian 
religion  of  easy  access  to  the  Grecian  mind.  He  removed 
from  Jehovah  the  odium  of  provincialism,  making  him  cos- 
mopolitan. He  gave  to  the  Graeco-Roman  world  what  it  must 
have  (if  it  would  be  saved),  a  catholic  religion. 

This  Jewish  scholar  and  preacher  did  not  know,  and  could 
not  know,  that  the  casual  letters  which  he  was  writing  to  his 
converts  would  be  to  future  ages  the  quarry  of  theology; 
that  out  of  the  flashes  of  his  genius  was  flowing  the  lava,  from 
which,  when  cold  and  hard,  men  should  hew  great  systems  of 
dogma,  in  which  the  God  Christus  should  be  enclosed  and 
entombed.  Yet  so  it  has  come  to  pass. 

In  the  Second  Century  of  the  Christian  era  the  Greek 
philosopher  found  in  the  Christian  church  a  congenial  home. 
He  entered  it  as  its  neophyte ;  he  soon  became  its  master. 
Bringing  with  him  his  native  philosophic  conception,  he  leav- 
ened the  dough  of  Christian  thought  and  feeling,  baked  that 
dough  in  the  fiery  oven  of  his  controversy,  and  gave  it  back 
to  Christianity  as  the  hard,  dry,  indigestible  loaf  of  orthodoxy. 

The  entrance  of  this  new  element  into  the  religion  of 
Christus  was  as  outwardly  innocent  as  it  was  inwardly  subtle. 
The  philosopher  did  not  come  into  the  church  to  exploit  by 
means  of  the  church  his  philosophic  preconceptions,  he  was 
won  by  the  spiritual  grace  and  the  moral  beauty  of  the  God 
Christus.  Once  in,  however,  he  could  not  help  bringing  his 
thought  to  bear  upon  the  life  of  the  religion  of  his  adoption 
and  slowly  transforming  it  until  it  became  not  the  religion  of 
his  adoption  but  the  religion  of  his  creation. 

We  have  in  the  story  of  Justin  Martyr  an  instance  of  this 
guileless  entrance  of  the  philosopher  into  the  church.  Justin 
was  a  scholar  and  a  thinker.  He  had  traveled  from  country 
to  country,  sitting  at  the  feet  of  the  great  masters  of  philoso- 
phy, to  grasp,  if  he  might,  the  secret  of  life,  to  know  why 


230  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

and  for  what  he  was  living.  This  man  was  a  seeker  after 
truth,  and  no  matter  how  far  he  traveled,  truth,  like  the  hori- 
zon, was  ever  beyond  and  before  him.  When  weary  of  his 
pursuit,  he  tells  us,  he  was  walking  one  day  on  the  shore  of 
the  sea,  meditating  upon  the  vanity  of  learning,  when  he  was 
approached  by  a  venerable  stranger,  who  asked  him  the  oc- 
casion of  his  thoughtfulness.  Made  confident  by  the  open, 
benign  countenance  of  this  wayfaring  man,  Justin  laid  bare 
to  him  his  heart;  told  him  of  his  longing  for  truth,  of  his  vain 
search,  and  of  his  weariness  even  to  despair.  Then  the 
stranger  told  him  that  truth  was  not  to  be  found  in  philoso- 
phy but  in  religion,  not  in  thinking  but  in  living,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  unfold  to  him  the  life  story  of  Jesus  ben  Joseph, 
the  Christus  of  God.  As  Justin  listened  his  heart  was  taken 
captive  and  he  followed  the  stranger  to  a  gathering  of  the 
Christians,  was  baptized,  and  so  became  a  father  in  and  a 
martyr  of  the  church. 

After  this  manner,  hundreds  upon  hundreds  of  Grecian  phil- 
osophers and  Egyptian  sages  embraced  the  religion  of  Jesus. 
Not  content  to  leave  it  in  its  simplicity,  they  founded  famous 
schools  for  its  explanation  in  Antioch,  Alexandria,  and  the 
cities  of  the  Empire,  and  wrote  the  next  chapter  in  the  history 
of  the  "Ways  of  the  Gods." 


CHAPTER  XLIX 
The  Coming  of  the  Absolute 

There  is  a  story  classic  to  Harvard  University,  which  is 
told  of  that  genial  philosopher  the  late  William  James  (blessed 
be  his  shade!)  and  of  his  equally  genial  colleague  and  friend 
the  late  Josiah  Royce.  James  and  Royce,  though  bosom 
friends,  were  bitter  philosophical  enemies;  Royce  was  an 
Idealist,  James  was  a  Pragmatist.  James  was  a  disciple  of 
the  school  of  Heraclitus,  Royce  was  a  follower  of  Plato. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  231 

Whenever  these  men  met  the  scrimmage  was  on.  One  after- 
noon as  Royce  and  James  were  contending  in  philosophic 
warfare,  the  wife  of  James  snapped  her  kodak  and  caught 
her  husband  in  the  act  of  shaking  his  fist  under  the  nose  of 
Royce.  When  Mrs.  James  had  developed  her  picture  she 
showed  it  to  her  husband;  he  took  it  and  wrote  under  the 
contending  figures  the  words :  "Damn  the  Absolute." 

In  damning  the  Absolute  James  was  blaspheming  the  great 
God  of  the  Greek  Dialectic.  Before  this  Absolute  the  intel- 
lect of  man  has  bowed  in  abject  submission  and  his  heart 
stood  still  in  holy  terror.  In  fear  of  the  Absolute  men  have 
sacrificed  their  reason,  arrested  the  progress  of  thought,  made 
heresy  a  crime,  and  filled  the  earth  with  blood  and  tears. 

Who  is  the  Absolute  and  whence  came  he?  To  answer  this 
question  we  must  go  far  back  in  the  history  of  man,  when 
nature  was  putting  man  to  school  and  he  was  learning  to  talk. 
Whether  speech  is  a  divine  gift  or  a  human  achievement  may 
be  open  to  question.  If  a  divine  gift,  it  is  the  most  useful  of 
all  the  gifts  the  gods  have  given  to  man ;  if  a  human  achieve- 
ment, it  reflects  the  highest  credit  upon  and  gives  great  ad- 
vantage to  the  race  of  animals  which  by  means  of  this  faculty 
of  speech  have  been  able  to  arrange  and  express  their  thoughts 
and  emotions,  to  communicate  easily  with  one  another,  and  to 
organize  themselves  into  societies  for  mutual  advantage.  Men 
who  are  of  a  common  speech  always  have  a  common  interest. 

That  speech  is  an  acquirement  rather  than  an  original  gift 
is,  I  think,  established  by  the  fact  that  we  all  have  to  learn 
to  talk  after  we  are  born ;  and  the  form  of  our  speech  depends 
upon  our  environment.  If  our  infancy  is  spent  in  France,  we 
will  speak  French ;  if  in  England,  English.  A  child  can  as 
easily  acquire  one  language  as  another.  It  is  only  after  our 
habits  of  speech  are  formed  that  acquisition  of  a  new  lan- 
guage is  difficult ;  but  at  no  time  in  our  lives  is  it  impossible. 
Speech  comes  by  hearing ;  if  one  leaves  one's  native  land 
and  resides  for  a  long  time  in  a  foreign  land,  one  will  almost 
of  necessity  acquire  the  speech  of  one's  residence  and  lose 
that  of  one's  birth. 


2.32  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

The  origin  of  speech  is  naively  set  forth  in  the  account  of 
creation  which  we  find  in  the  second  chapter  of  Genesis, 
where  it  is  written :  "And  out  of  the  ground  the  Lord  Jehovah 
formed  every  beast  of  the  field,  and  every  fowl  of  the  air, 
and  brought  them  unto  Adam  to  see  what  he  would  call  them ; 
and  whatsoever  Adam  called  every  living  creature  that  was 
the  name  thereof."  Undoubtedly  this  account  of  the  origin  of 
language  is  correct  in  its  main  elements:  speech  did  begin  in 
names.  And  living  creatures,  being  the  enemies  and  friends 
of  man,  were  the  first  to  receive  from  him  the  honor  and 
convenience  of  a  name.  Some  peculiarity,  such  as  a  growl 
or  a  shriek,  was  imitated  and  so  became  the  name  of  the 
animal  or  bird  uttering  the  growl  or  the  shriek.  When  once 
man  had  acquired  the  habit  of  naming  things  the  immense 
usefulness  of  this  acquirement  caused  its  rapid  expansion. 
To  give  a  thing  a  name  is  to  give  it  definiteness;  by  its  name 
we  separate  it  from  all  other  things.  If  a  man  says:  "I  met 
a  man,"  we  know  at  once  that  he  did  not  meet  a  horse  or  a 
cow;  if  he  says  I  met  John  Smith  we  are  aware  that  it  was 
not  William  Robinson  that  he  met  or  any  other  man  save 
John  Smith.  If  one  had  to  describe  the  man  whom  one  met 
by  the  color  of  his  hair  and  his  eyes,  the  length  of  his  nose, 
and  the  squareness  of  his  chin,  we  should  not,  nine  times  out 
of  ten,  be  able  to  recognize  the  man  by  the  description,  but 
when  he  says  John  Smith,  then  we  know  at  once  the  man  by 
the  name  of  the  man.  The  descriptions  of  the  hero  and  the 
heroine  by  an  author  are  always  amusing  to  the  physiological 
reader,  for  he  sees  at  once  that  were  he  to  paint  a  picture 
from  such  description,  he  would  out-whistle  Whistler  in  im- 
pressionism. 

"But,"  at  this  point  cries  my  impatient  reader,  "but  what  has 
all  this  to  do  with  the  Absolute?"  Have  patience,  dear  reader, 
and  you  will  soon  see  that  this  has  everything  to  do  with 
the  Absolute. 

From  naming  things,  man  went  on  to  the  naming  of  quali- 
ties; some  things  were  sweet  and  some  were  sour,  that  is, 
some  things  were  pleasant  to  the  taste,  expanding  the  glands, 
and  some  were  unpleasant,  contracting  the  glands;  hence  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  233 

sweets  and  the  sours.  Some  things  were  bright  to  the  eyes 
and  some  were  dark,  and  so  the  observer  became  conscious 
of  and  began  to  name  the  reds  and  the  greens,  the  white  and 
the  black.  Man  saw  some  things  at  rest  and  some  in  motion 
and  he  gave  names  to  these  states  of  existence.  He  saw  that 
some  things  were  like  other  things  and  he  put  these  together 
under  a  common  name.  So  we  have  "man,"  "horse,"  and 
"dog"  as  the  general  names  of  a  vast  number  of  individual 
men,  horses,  and  dogs.  We  have  "sweet"  and  "sour,"  "soft" 
and  "hard,"  as  general  names  for  certain  classes  of  sensations. 
We  have  "good"  and  "bad"  as  distinguishing  certain  lines  of 
conduct  in  their  relation  to  our  happiness  or  unhappiness. 

In  the  course  of  the  evolution  of  language  man  acquired 
three  faculties  which,  while  they  have  been  of  untold  advan- 
tage, have  also  been  the  occasion  of  much  confusion  in  his 
thought  and  misfortune  to  his  life.  These  faculties  are  gen- 
eralization, classification,  and  abstraction.  By  generalization 
man  brings  together  a  vast  number  of  things  that  have  some- 
what in  common,  by  classification  he  gives  to  those  things  a 
common  name,  by  abstraction  he  takes  away  from  the  classi- 
fied object  all  particulars  and  leaves  only  the  general  char- 
acteristics ;  as,  for  instance,  when  one  says  "horse,"  one  ab- 
stracts height,  weight,  color,  breed,  and  leaves  in  the  mind  only 
the  general-notion  horse.  In  the  world  of  reality  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  horse,  only  a  horse  or  horses ;  horse  is  simply  a 
convenience  in  thinking.  The  same  is  true  of  qualities ;  when 
one  says  "good,"  one  has  a  general  notion  of  actions  conducive 
to  well  being;  in  reality  there  is  no  such  thing  as  good,  only 
good  deeds.  Good  is  a  counter  in  thinking. 

And  here  came  the  danger ;  when  generalization,  classifi- 
cation, and  abstraction  were  in  the  full  swing  of  habit,  this 
habit  induced  the  further  habit  on  the  part  of  the  mind  to 
think  abstractly,  to  think  vaguely  of  horse  instead  of  horses, 
of  good  instead  of  good  deeds.  And  the  more  highly  devel- 
oped the  language,  the  more  readily  it  gave  itself  to  this  mode 
of  abstract  thinking.  Children  always  think  concretely  as  do 
primitive  and  uneducated  people;  the  grown-up,  educated 
man  does  nine-tenths  of  his  thinking  abstractly.  He  takes  a 


234  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

glance  at  a  given  object,  refers  it  to  its  class,  and  has  done 
with  it.  The  primitive  man  sees  the  object  before  him  with 
its  particular  features;  the  thought  of  the  primitive  man  is 
vivid  and  limited,  the  thought  of  the  cultured  man  is  vague 
and  wide.  The  primitive  man  deals  for  the  most  part  with 
nouns  and  verbs,  the  cultured  man  with  adjectives  and  ad- 
verbs; the  primitive  man  is  a  poet,  the  cultured  man  is  a 
philosopher. 

The  most  highly  cultured  people  the  world  has  ever  known 
were  the  Greeks,  and  especially  the  Attic  Greek  in  the  time 
of  Athenian  supremacy.  These  people  developed  the  rich- 
est language  ever  evolved  by  man.  The  Greek  expresses  the 
nicest  shades  of  meaning;  gives  itself  to  the  most  delicate 
abstractions.  It  was  this  perfection  of  language  that  was 
both  the  glory  and  the  snare  of  the  Greek.  The  Greek  mind 
lost  itself  in  its  language,  was  entangled  in  its  own  subtlety. 
Greek  philosophy  was  the  outcome  of  this  effort  of  the  Greek 
mind  to  carry  generalization,  classification,  and  abstraction 
to  the  limit.  The  Greek  dealt  with  words  rather  than  with 
things.  His  itch  was  not  for  observation  but  for  definition. 
Words  became  to  him  realities,  existing  apart  from  the  mind. 

The  prince  of  these  jugglers  was  Plato.  Plato  was  essen- 
tially a  man  of  words.  His  doctrine  of  ideas  gives  reality  to 
words,  good  is  a  reality  apart  from  good  deeds;  before  there 
can  be  good  deeds  there  must  be  good.  This  abstract  good 
is  the  origin  of  all  concrete  good.  So  also  there  were  sweet 
and  sour  from  which  all  sweets  and  sours  were  derived. 
Plato's  world  of  ideas  was  a  world  of  adjectives  waiting  to 
be  united  to  their  nouns.  When  one  penetrates  into  the  ideal 
world  of  Plato  one  is  in  a  fantastic  world  where  everything  is 
wrong-end  first;  good  is  waiting  for  good  deeds,  sweet  to  be 
sweets,  and  sour  to  be  sours.  One  cannot  help  thinking  that 
the  philosopher  is  playing  with  words, — and  so  he  is.  One 
can  see  a  twinkle  in  his  philosophic  eyes  when  he  uses  words 
as  a  child  uses  blocks  in  a  nursery  to  build  fantastic  struc- 
tures that  can  serve  no  purpose  except  to  amuse  the  child  or 
the  philosopher. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  235 

The  last  and  greatest  of  abstractions  is  Being.  Being  is 
existence  as  existence,  apart  from  any  existing  thing.  When 
one  thinks  of  Being  as  Being  one  must  be  careful  not  to 
think  of  tall  or  short,  narrrow  or  broad,  dark  or  light,  hard 
or  soft,  motion  or  change,  wash  your  mind  clean  of  every 
possible  particular  and  think  only  of  the  general,  and  you 
have  Being.  And  Being  is  the  Absolute. 

Plato  was  illogical  and  identified  good  with  Being;  and  the 
Christian  fathers,  still  more  illogical,  identified  Being  with 
the  Hebrew  God  Jehovah,  whence  came  all  the  confusion  of 
Christian  theology. 

The  Absolute  is  absolute  and  he  is  nothing  else.  He  is 
imprisoned  in  his  own  absolutism.  If  the  Absolute  do  but 
wink  his  eye,  his  absolutism  is  in  danger;  if  he  sneeze,  it  is 
shattered.  When  Christian  theology  made  Absolute  Being 
its  primal  god  it  was  on  the  horns  of  a  dilemma.  If  its  god 
acted  he  couldn't  be  Absolute,  and  if  he  couldn't  act  he  was 
of  no  use  as  a  god.  Theology  first  shut  God  up  in  his  ab- 
solutism then  had  to  resort  to  all  sorts  of  contrivances  to 
get  him  out  of  his  prison.  Like  Haroun  al  Raschid,  this 
Absolute  had  to  put  on  the  disguise  of  the  relative  and  so 
get  out  into  his  world.  Why  should  the  Absolute  go  to  the 
trouble  of  creating  a  universe.  Absolute  Good  cannot  better 
Absolute  Good.  We  are  told  that  the  Absolute  was  lonely; 
"What,"  says  Ralph  Cudworth,  that  delightful  Platonist  of 
the  Seventeenth  Century,  in  his  'Intellectual  System  of  the 
Universe,'  "what  was  He  [the  Absolute]  doing  in  his  melan- 
cholic dungeon  before  he  entered  upon  the  work  of  creation?" 
The  theologians  have  been  sadly  bested  to  give  any  good, 
plausible  reason  why  the  Absolute  God  should  disturb  his 
absolutism  by  creating  a  world.  How  can  changelessness 
initiate  change? 

Poor  dear  old  Plato,  how  by  your  juggling  you  have  con- 
fused the  world !  How  you  persuaded  men  to  put  the  cart 
before  the  horse,  the  concept  before  the  percept,  the  idea 
before  the  thing  itself.  When  you  spelled  idea  with  a  capital 
I  and  persuaded  men  that  the  idea  was  antecedent  to  and 
the  cause  of  the  reality,  you  played  a  scurvey  trick  on  human 


236  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

thinking.  You  led  men  to  believe  that  something  was  noth- 
ing and  nothing  is  something.  As  Walter  Pater  says:  "The 
Absolute,  when  you  come  to  it,  is  nothing,  pure  idealism 
is  pure  nothingness."  Well  might  Claus  in  Balzac's  story 
"The  Search  of  The  Absolute,"  spend  fortune  and  life  in  the 
search  and  never  find  it,  for  the  Absolute  is  nothing, — and 
nothing  can  never  be  found. 

Where  Christian  theology  went  on  to  identify  the  Jehovah 
god  of  the  old  Testament  with  the  Absolute  Being  of  the 
Greek  philosophy,  it  entered  upon  a  course  of  bewildering 
contradictions  that  have  made  it  the  despair  of  the  human 
mind.  The  best  that  the  mind  can  say  is:  "I  believe  be- 
cause I  cannot  understand."  To  sing: 

Change  and  decay  in  all  around  I  see, 

O,  Thou  who  changest  not,  abide  with  me. 

may  soothe  the  restless  soul,  but  to  make  of  changelessness  a 
god  is  to  make  your  god  impotent  for  good  or  evil.  The 
Absolute  of  the  Greek  Dialectic, — without  extension,  color, 
feeling,  or  motion, — may  be  a  great  god  in  the  intelligence, 
but  he  can  never  reach  the  heart.  The  Absolute  is  a  god 
made  out  of  a  word,  it  is  an  adjective  torn  from  its  noun ; 
and  yet  no  Moloch  of  brass  in  the  groves  of  Syria  has  been 
more  cruel  than  this  god  of  the  Greek  Dialectic.  In  his 
name  thinking  has  been  held  a  crime.  Men  and  women  and 
children  have  been  burned  in  the  fire  of  persecution  because 
they  have  failed  to  say  of  the  god  Absolute  just  what  his 
priests  commanded  them  to  say.  Far  removed  from  all  that 
is  relative  to  the  life  of  man,  the  Absolute,  like  some  bed- 
ridden tyrant,  has  spread  terror  over  the  earth.  Well  might 
James  say:  "Damn  the  Absolute!"  Only  by  coming  out  of 
his  absolutism  can  God  come  into  his  world. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        237 

CHAPTER  L 
Christus,  The  Son  of  The  Absolute 

As  long  as  the  person  and  the  religion  of  Jesus  ben  Joseph 
were  in  the  keeping  of  his  own  people  there  was  no  dispute 
as  to  his  origin  or  nature.  It  never  occurred  to  Peter,  James, 
or  John  to  think  of  him  as  other  than  as  a  man.  He  was  the 
son  of  Mary,  and  his  father's  name  was  Joseph.  He  differed 
from  those  about  him  in  degree  but  not  in  kind. 

Jesus  was  a  greater  man  than  Peter :  Peter  was  the  disciple 
and  Jesus  the  master.  His  intense  personality,  with  his  pow- 
ers of  loving,  drew  John  to  his  bosom.  His  mother  and  his 
brothers,  unable  to  comprehend  his  genius,  said  that  he  was 
beside  himself.  No  one,  I  say,  when  he  was  alive,  thought 
of  Jesus  other  than  a  man, — a  great  man,  a  good  man,  a 
crazy  man, — all  sorts  of  opinions  were  entertained  in  regard 
to  him ;  but  not  for  one  moment  did  men  think  of  him  as  a 
god,  not  for  a  single  instant  did  Jesus  have  any  such  thought 
of  himself.  When  the  rich  man  bows  to  him  and  calls  him 
"Good  Master,"  he  answers  roughly:  "Why  callest  thou  me 
good,  there  is  but  one  good, — that  is  God."  If  we  except 
the  prologue  to  the  Fourth  Gospel  there  is  not  a  word  in  the 
New  Testament  affirming  anything  like  the  Deity  of  Jesus. 

The  very  fact  that  his  followers  came  to  look  upon  him  as 
the  Messiah,  or  the  Christus  of  God,  was  on  their  part  an 
affirmation  of  his  human  origin  and  his  human  nature.  To 
be  Messiah  he  must  be  of  the  seed  of  David  according  to 
the  flesh.  He  was  the  anointed  of  the  Lord  just  as  David 
was  the  anointed  of  the  Lord.  He  was  a  man  upon  whom  had 
come  a  double  portion  of  God's  spirit.  He  was  the  chosen 
servant  of  God  to  do  his  will. 

Even  the  birth  stories  of  Matthew  and  Luke,  which  are 
of  much  later  origin  than  the  body  of  those  Gospels,  do  not 
give  to  Jesus  the  attributes  of  Deity.  His  origin  is  the  out- 
come of  a  creative  act  of  Jehovah.  Just  as  Jehovah 
created  the  first  man  out  of  clay,  so  he  created  the  second 


238  THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

man  out  of  the  substance  of  human  nature  in  the  womb  of  the 
Virgin.     Even  in  Second  Century  thought  Adam  and  Jesus 
were  equally  the  creatures  of  God.     The  early  church  did  not 
>ray  to  Jesus,  it  prayed  to  God  in  the  name  of  Jesus. 

When  the  religion  of  Jesus  passed  out  of  the  control  of  the 
Jewish  mind  and  conscience  and  came  into  the  power  of  the 
acute  intelligence  of  the  Greek  and  the  practical  judgment  of 
the  Roman,  an  elective  process  set  in  by  which  elements  of 
Greek  philosophy  and  Roman  politics  were  amalgamated  with 
the  principles  of  the  Hebrew  religion  to  bring  into  being 
that  new  body  of  thought  known  as  Christianity. 

The  first  change  wrought  in  the  system  of  Hebraic  think- 
ing was  the  deification  of  Christus.  This  deification  was  the 
instinctive  tribute  of  the  common  people, — the  slaves  and  the 
artisans, — to  the  character  and  work  of  Jesus.  When  salva- 
tion was  preached  to  these  outcasts  of  the  Roman  world, 
when  they  were  told  that  Jesus  had  died  for  them,  that  he 
had  come  again  from  the  dead,  that  he  had  gone  away  from 
them  into  heaven,  and  that  he  was  to  come  again  with  glory 
to  judge  the  world,  to  cast  down  the  mighty  from  their  seat 
and  exalt  the  humble  and  meek,  it  was  perfectly  natural  for 
these  simple  souls  to  think  of  Jesus  as  a  God.  They  were 
not  philosophers  troubled  about  the  unity  of  God,  they  were 
plain  folk  to  whom  gods  were  as  simple  as  themselves.  The 
gods  were  to  them  almost  as  numerous  as  men ;  they  changed 
their  gods  when  they  changed  their  city.  They  had  wor- 
shipped Apollo,  now  they  worshipped  Jesus.  The  change  was 
no  greater  than  if  a  man  to-day  were  to  cease  to  be  an  Epis- 
copalian and  become  a  member  of  the  Salvation  Army, — if  so 
great. 

That  men  should  become  gods  was  not  strange  to  that 
generation ;  had  not  Julius  Caesar,  almost  in  their  day,  be- 
come a  god,  with  his  place  among  the  stars  and  his  month 
one  of  the  months  of  the  year?  Was  not  the  image  of  Divus 
Csesar  set  up  in  every  city  for  men  to  worship,  and  was  not 
Christus  greater  than  Caesar?  This  reasoning  on  the  part  of 
the  mass  of  the  Christian  people  deified  Jesus.  Before  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        239 

Second  Century  had  passed  away  the  Christus  was  the  cen- 
tral object  of  Christian  worship.  The  church  no  longer 
prayed  through  him  but  to  him.  The  cry  of  "Christe  Eleison!" 
went  up  from  a  million  hearts  that  looked  to  this  god  for 
mercy  and  salvation.  By  the  end  of  the  Second  Century  the 
Deity  of  Jesus  was  the  heart  and  the  soul  of  the  Christian 
faith. 

At  the  same  time  the  Christian  church  was  compelled  to 
recognize  another  God  beside  Jesus.  Jesus  was  not  the  origi- 
nal God;  he  was  the  Son  of  God.  The  Son  was  nearer  and 
dearer  to  the  Christian  heart  than  the  Father,  but  still  there 
was  the  Father  in  the  background,  demanding  the  acknowl- 
edgment of  his  original  divinity.  So  that  the  Christian  church 
to  the  ordinary  observer  had  two  gods,  the  Jehovah  Father 
and  the  Christus  Son.  And  yet  this  sect  was  crying  with 
all  its  lungs  that  there  was  and  could  be  only  one  God.  It 
was  this  contradiction  that  brought  on  the  Christian  body  the 
derision  of  its  enemies  and  sadly  disturbed  the  thoughts  of  its 
friends. 

When  the  Greek  philosopher  who  was  a  Christian  was 
called  upon  to  give  a  reason  for  the  faith  that  was  in  him,  he 
had  as  a  Christian  to  hold  fast  to  the  Deity  of  Jesus,  as  a 
philosopher  he  had  to  preserve  the  Unity  of  God.  When  the 
heathen  scoffer  asked  him  if  Christus  were  a  god,  he  must 
answer:  "Yes,"  when  the  same  scoffer  asked  if  the  Father 
were  a  God,  the  philosopher  must  still  answer:  "Yes."  Then 
says  the  scoffer :  "I  cannot  see  how  for  all  your  boasting  you 
differ  from  the  vulgar  round  about  you.  It  is  true  that  you 
have  only  two  gods,  while  they  may  have  half  a  dozen,  but 
that  is  a  matter  of  degree.  You  admit  the  principle  of  more 
than  one  god;  having  two  now,  you  may  have  a  dozen  next 
year."  "No,  no,"  protests  the  Christian  philosopher,  growing 
red  in  the  face,  "you  misjudge  us  altogether,  we  have  and 
can  have  only  one  God,  Christus  is  not  a  god  in  his  own 
right;  he  is  the  Son  of  God."  "Oh,  I  see,"  says  the  scoffer, 
"but  it  seems  to  me  that  you  have  not  bettered  your  case ;  if  a 
father  and  a  son  are  two  men,  why  should  not  a  father  and 


240  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

son  be  two  gods?  And,  besides,  how  does  it  come  to  pass 
that  your  father  God  has  a  son?  Has  your  God  a  wife  to 
whose  couch  he  goes  up  and  begets  sons  and  daughters,  even 
as  Marduk  in  the  Temple  of  Babylon?"  "Never,  never!" 
shouts  the  Christian  philosopher  in  a  rage;  "such  a  thought 
were  blasphemy ;  our  God  is  holy  and  knows  not  the  shame 
of  a  woman's  love."  "How,  then,  has  he  a  son?"  says  the 
scoffer. 

This  problem  of  the  relation  of  the  unity  of  God  to  the 
Deity  of  Jesus  disturbed  the  peace  of  the  Church  for  four 
centuries.  In  the  process  of  its  solution  the  basis  of  Chris- 
tianity was  changed  from  conduct  to  creed ;  it  ceased  to  be 
a  religion  of  the  heart  and  became  a  dogma  of  the  intellect. 

The  church  had  to  define  the  Sonship  of  Jesus  Christ  in 
such  a  way  as  not  to  disturb  the  absolute  oneness  of  the 
Father;  God  was  alone,  unapproachable,  without  spouse  or 
marriage-bed,  and  yet  he  must  have  a  son.  Unconsciously  the 
theologians  of  the  Third  Century  devised  a  method  of  genera- 
tion which  nature  had  used  in  the  beginning  of  life.  In  the 
slime  of  the  river  bottoms  are  little  creatures  the  life  history 
of  which  antedates  man's  by  a  million  generations;  in  these 
minute  creatures  we  see  how  life  was  continued  before  sex 
with  all  its  complexities  was  evolved  to  be  the  glory  and  the 
shame  of  the  world.  The  amoeba,  like  God,  is  one  and  al- 
ways one;  it  is  complete  in  itself,  no  female  of  the  species 
disturbs  its  peace.  It  neither  marries  nor  is  given  in  mar- 
riage. It  is  in  itself  both  male  and  female.  When  the  amoeba 
grows  too  large  for  comfort  it  contracts  in  the  center  and 
breaks  in  two,  and  there  are  two  amoebae  instead  of  one,  yet 
each  one  is  one.  This  is  generation  by  budding. 

So  it  was  taught  by  the  philosophers  that  God  generated  in 
himself  another  God  and  begat  out  of  his  own  self  a  son. 
But  even  this  did  not  save  the  Unity  of  God,  for  the  Son 
could  not  be  equal  to  the  Father,  because  the  Father  was 
before  the  Son  in  time.  The  Father  was  eternal,— without 
cause,  beginning,  or  end.  The  Father  was  the  cause  of  the 
Son,  and  the  generation  of  the  Son  was  the  beginning  of 
time. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  241 

It  was  at  this  point  that  the  great  battle  was  fought  in  the 
Fourth  Century  that  resulted  in  the  establishment  of  the 
orthodox  form  of  Christianity.  Two  parties, — one  led  by 
Arius  the  Libyan,  and  the  other  by  Athanasius  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Alexandria, — struggled  for  the  mastery  in  the  body 
of  the  church.  The  party  of  Athanasius  asserted  that  Chris- 
tus  was  the  Son  of  God  from  all  eternity  and  Arius  affirming 
that  there  was  a  time  when  Christus  was  not  TQV  TCOTSOUX  -r^v; 
was  the  war  cry  of  the  Arian.  Arius  kept  Christus  in  the 
region  of  creation,  Athanasius  put  him  outside  time  and 
space.  Arius  maintained  the  Unity  of  God,  Athanasius  up- 
held the  Deity  of  Christus.  Arius  made  the  Oneness  of  God, 
Athanasius  the  Presence  of  God,  the  supreme  article  of  faith. 

Both  Arius  and  Athanasius  were  Platonists  holding  to  the 
Absolute.  Arius  kept  the  Absolute  intact ;  Athanasius  gave 
him  a  way  of  escape.  Arius  represented  the  primitive  con- 
ception of  the  nature  and  mission  of  Jesus  Christ,  Athanasius 
the  conception  of  the  Philosophic  schools. 

In  the  course  of  this  contention  Jesus  was  robbed  of  his 
simplicity;  instead  of  a  being  of  flesh  and  blood, — born  of  a 
woman,  made  under  the  law,  a  man  among  men,  living  the  life 
and  dying  the  death  of  man, — he  was  transformed  into  a  theo- 
logical concept.  He  was  exalted  to  the  right  hand  of  the 
Majesty  on  high.  He  became  God  out  of  God,  very  God  out 
of  very  God :  the  Second  Person  in  the  Adorable  Trinity. 

This  exaltation  of  Jesus  lost  him  his  hold  on  the  hearts  of 
the  people.  He  ceased  to  be  the  God  of  a  religion  and  be- 
came the  Divinity  of  a  theology.  In  order  to  adapt  himself 
to  the  demands  of  the  Greek  intelligence,  he  had  to  sacrifice 
that  which  had  made  him  dear  to  the  heart  of  the  shepherd 
and  the  slave.  Men  could  worship  Jesus,  whether  god  or 
man,  but  they  could  not  and  cannot  worship  the  Second 
Person  of  the  Adorable  Trinity.  Such  a  god  is  too  abstract 
and  abstruse  to  hold  the  devotion  of  the  simple. 

The  elevation  of  Christus  into  the  regions  of  the  Absolute 
removed  him  from  the  realm  of  human  experience.  His  fate 
was  the  fate  of  all  the  gods.  When  the  gods  by  reason  of 


242        THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

changes  in  thought  and  circumstance  outgrow  the  common 
people  then  that  befalls  them  which  happens  to  the  English 
statesman  when  he  outlives  his  usefulness  in  the  Commons, 
he  is  sent  up  into  the  House  of  Lords.  And  so  it  happened 
to  Jesus  ben  Joseph. 


CHAPTER  LI 
The  Divine  Personality  of  Christus,  Son  of  The  Absolute 

By  reason  of  his  exaltation  to  the  rank  of  an  Absolute  God, 
Jesus  ben  Joseph  lost  his  human  and  acquired  a  divine  per- 
sonality. This  matter  was  settled  in  the  Council  of  Ephesus 
at  Whitsuntide,  in  the  year  431.  One  Anastasius,  a  presby- 
ter of  Constantinople,  at  the  instance  and  with  the  full  con- 
sent of  his  bishop,  had  warned  his  hearers,  in  a  sermon,  of 
the  danger  of  giving  Mary,  the  Mother  of  Jesus,  the  title  of 
Mother  of  God.  It  is  impossible,  said  the  preacher,  that  God 
the  Absolute  should  have  a  mother;  if  he  were  born,  he  could 
not  be  Absolute ;  and  if  he  were  not  Absolute,  he  could  not  be 
God.  The  preacher  went  on  to  say  that  Mary  was  the 
mother  of  the  human  person  Jesus,  with  whom  the  divine 
person  Christus,  descending  from  heaven,  was  associated. 

No  sooner  was  this  utterance  made  than  there  was  an 
uproar  among  the  monks  and  the  clergy,  for  the  title  Theo- 
tokos  (or  Mother  of  God)  had  grown  dear  to  the  monkish 
and  clerical  heart.  Appeal  was  made  from  the  judgment  of 
Nestorius,  bishop  of  Constantinople,  who  had  confirmed  the 
doctrine  of  his  presbyter,  to  Cyril,  bishop  of  Alexandria  (the 
same  who  caused  the  brilliant  Hypatia  to  be  cruelly  put  to 
death),  and  to  John,  bishop  of  Antioch.  So  great  was  the 
contention  over  this  question  that  the  emperors  Theodosius  and 
Valentinian  ordered  the  bishops  metropolitan  with  their  suf- 
fragans to  assemble  in  council  in  the  city  of  Ephesus  to  de- 
bate and  settle  this  dispute.  Cyril  of  Alexandria  with  his 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  243 

suffragans  and  partisans  arrived  first,  and  without  waiting  for 
John  of  Antioch,  who  was  delayed,  proceeded  to  condemn 
Nestorius  and  Anastasius  as  heretics;  to  deprive  them  of 
their  offices  in  the  church,  and  to  decree  their  perpetual  ban- 
ishment. John  of  Antioch,  when  he  reached  the  city,  was 
indignant  at  the  hasty  action  of  Cyril  and  held  up  the  decis- 
ion. But  after  a  furious  controversy,  in  which  Christian 
charity  was  torn  to  tatters,  the  party  of  Cyril  prevailed,  the 
teaching  of  Nestorius  was  declared  to  be  heretical,  and  as  a 
heretic  Nestorius  was  deprived  of  his  holy  office  and  ban- 
ished from  the  city  of  Constantinople. 

The  effect  of  this  decision  was  to  affirm  that  Jesus,  the 
Christus,  was  one  and  only  one  person.  The  Nestorian  doc- 
trine had  implied  a  double  personality  in  the  one  individual ; 
the  human  personality  of  Jesus  and  the  divine  personality  of 
Christus,  so  that  one  could  say  this  Jesus  did  as  a  man :  as 
a  man  he  wept  at  the  tomb  of  Lazarus  and  died  on  the  cross, 
for  God  can  neither  weep  nor  die,  and  this  Christus  did  as  a 
god :  as  a  god  he  commanded  the  winds  to  cease  and  restored 
the  dead  son  of  the  widow  of  Nain  alive  to  his  mother. 

But  the  decree  of  the  Council  put  an  end  to  this  distinction. 
Jesus  the  Christus  was  One  Person,  and  that  Person  was  God. 
God  wept  at  the  tomb  of  Lazarus  and  died  on  the  cross. 

The  Nestorian  heresy,  like  the  Arian,  was  an  effort  to 
save  the  Absolute.  The  Nestorian  doctrine  kept  God  free 
from  the  entanglements  arising  from  the  human  imperfec- 
tions of  Jesus;  the  orthodox  teaching  made  God  responsible 
for  every  word  and  act  of  Jesus.  It  gave  infallibility  and  im- 
peccability to  the  character  of  Jesus,  for  God  could  not  err, 
neither  could  He  sin.  The  orthodox  view  was  more  logical, 
from  the  standpoint  of  pure  reason,  the  Nestorian  more  in 
accord  with  the  facts. 

As  we  read  the  story  of  this  Council  and  of  the  Council 
of  Chalcedon  which  followed,  we  are  grieved  at  the  utter  lack 
of  charity  in  the  hearts  of  these  bishops  and  doctors  of  the 
church.  During  these  controversies  that  spiritual  disease  was 
developed  known  as  odium  theologicum, — a  disease  that  soon 
became  an  incurable  malady  destroying  the  very  life  of  the 


244  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Christian  religion.  These  controversies,  which  raged  so 
fiercely,  consumed  all  that  was  lovely  and  saving  in  the  re- 
ligion of  Jesus  ben  Joseph,  leaving  nothing  but  clinkers  and 
ashes. 

The  very  words  of  the  controversies  that  rent  the  church 
of  the  Fourth  and  Fifth  Centuries  have  become  meaningless 
to  us.  When  on  Easter  day  the  choir  sings  to  Stainer's 
music  the  Nicean  creed,  the  music  may  thrill  our  emotions, 
but  the  words  do  not  stir  our  thoughts.  For  all  the  good 
that  comes  to  our  understanding,  the  words  might  as  well  be 
in  an  unknown  tongue.  The  Roman  Church  does  well  to  sing 
the  creeds  and  service  of  the  church  in  Latin ;  this  soothes  the 
emotions  and  does  not  disturb  the  mind. 

As  a  matter  of  mental  gymnastics  I  ask  the  reader  to  be 
patient  while  I  try  to  make  as  clear  as  his,  or  her,  and  my 
own  mental  capacity  will  permit,  the  meaning  of  the  words 
which  set  the  early  church  on  fire,  and  which,  cold  and  hard 
as  volcanic  rock,  are  now  imbedded  in  our  creeds.  The  con- 
troversies, the  outcome  of  which  was  the  orthodox  Chris- 
tianity of  the  Fourth  and  Fifth  Centuries,  and  which  re- 
mains orthodox  to  the  present  day,  raged  around  two  words : 
"nature"  and  "person."  Was  Christus  of  the  same  nature  or 
substance  as  the  Father,  and  had  he  a  human  as  well  as  a 
divine  personality.  The  first  question  was  the  cause  of  the 
Arian,  the  second  of  the  Nestorian  controversy.  What  then  is 
"nature"  or  "substance"  and  what  is  "person?" 

The  best  definition  of  a  word  is  to  be  found,  not  in  the 
dictionary,  but  in  the  ordinary  use  of  the  word  as  it  is  cur- 
rent on  the  lips  of  men.  When  we  speak  of  human  nature, 
cr  as  the  Greeks  would  call  it,  of  human  substance,  we  have 
in  mind  all  that  is  substantial  to  the  existence  of  man.  Hu- 
man nature  implies  the  upright  position,  the  sensitive  hand, 
the  conscious  mind,  the  social  instinct.  All  that  goes  to  the 
making  of  a  man  preexists,  as  one  may  say,  in  the  substance 
out  of  which  man  is  made.  When  we  are  conceived  our 
vitality  is  the  vitality  of  the  human  seed,  our  substance  the 
substance  of  human  flesh  and  blood ;  it  is  because  of  this  sub- 
stance, which  is  preexistent  to  our  birth,  that  we  are  born 


THE  WAYS  OF  TJIE  GODS  245 

human  and  not  canine  or  other  being.  All  around  us  we  see 
this  fact  of  nature  or  substance:  in  the  tree,  in  the  horse,  in 
the  dog.  It  is  this  substance  that  separates  one  order  of  life 
from  another.  A  man  is  a  man  and  not  a  dog,  because  he  is 
of  the  substance  or  nature  of  a  man  and  not  of  a  dog. 

On  the  surface  these  substances  are  permanent  and  ex- 
clusive; a  man  never  should  be,  never  can  be,  never  will  be 
a  dog,  his  nature  or  substance  forbids  it.  Now  the  Greek 
mind,  aware  of  this  surface  fact,  asserted  that  there  was  a 
god  nature  or  substance  forever  separating  God  from  all  that 
is  not  God.  God  could  not  be  man  any  more  than  man  could 
be  God.  As  God  he  must  be  forever  apart  and  alone.  This 
is  not  the  desire  of  his  soul,  it  is  the  necessity  of  his  nature, — 
and  according  to  this  theory  man  is  man  and  God  is  God  and 
never  the  twain  shall  meet.  It  was  the  effort  of  the  Nicean 
theologian  to  bridge  this  unbridgable  gulf.  The  gods  of  the 
heathen  could  not  be  gods,  because  they  were  so  human ;  if 
Jesus  were  a  mere  man,  as  it  is  said,  he  could  not  be  God 
because  he  was  a  man.  And  there  you  are !  God  is  shut  out 
of  this  world  and  he  can't  get  in ;  he  needs  man  and  man 
needs  him ;  but  it  is  a  far  cry  from  the  loneliness  of  the  Abso- 
lute to  the  necessities  of  the  human  soul.  One  deep  calleth 
another,  because  of  the  noise  of  the  waterpipes, — the  deep  of 
God's  loneliness  calls  to  the  deep  of  man's  necessity.  To 
meet  this  necessity  the  Heaven,  like  Uranos  of  old,  descends 
to  the  embraces  of  earth ;  the  Person  of  God  comes  down  and 
impregnates  the  womb  of  a  woman.  And  God  is  born  and 
lives  and  dies,  as  does  a  man,  and  all  this  that  man  and  God 
may  meet  and  know  one  another. 

This  is  a  beautiful  and,  under  certain  conditions  of  thought, 
a  workable  theory.  In  spite  of  its  outre  character  and  in- 
numerable contradictions,  the  theory  prevailed  as  long  as  men 
held  to  the  doctrine  of  the  immutability  of  substance  or 
nature.  This  was  Plato's  doctrine  of  Idea  or  the  Absolute  ap- 
plied to  theology.  Each  existence  in  the  visible  world  had 
its  form  or  substance  in  the  invisible  world  and  it  could  never 
change.  Man  is  man  and  dog  is  dog,  because  man  and  dog 
have  their  archetype  in  the  eternal  mind  which  altereth  not. 


246  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

He  who  holds  to  the  Absolute  and  believes  in  the  perma- 
nence of  species  must  devise  some  such  artificial  method  as 
that  of  the  Nicean  creed  to  open  a  way  for  the  Absolute  to 
become  relative  and  enter  into  the  activities  of  the  world. 

When  once,  however,  this  illusion  of  the  permanence  of 
nature  or  substance  is  dispelled,  when  we  see  as  we  do  to-day 
that  species  are  not  immutable,  that  nature  or  substance  in- 
stead of  being  as  hard  as  iron,  is  as  plastic  as  clay ;  that  man 
and  dog  have  more  in  common  than  in  difference — the  di- 
gesting stomach,  the  breathing  lung,  the  beating  heart  are 
the  same  in  the  dog  and  in  the  man;  that  human  nature  re- 
cords the  experience  of  all  nature  from  the  lowest  infusoria  to 
the  highest  and  most  gifted  man,  then  we  see  that  all  the 
elaborate  apparatus  of  the  Nicean  theology  was  devised  to 
overcome  a  difficulty  that  did  not  exist.  We  may  pity  these 
men  as  we  pity  the  builders  of  the  Tower  of  Babel,  they  were 
building  a  bridge  to  span  a  supposed  chasm  between  God  and 
man, — a  chasm  so  wide  that  it  needed  the  infinite  to  reach 
from  side  to  side, — and  lo,  and  behold !  the  chasm  is  not 
there.  Earth  and  sky  are  not  separated;  they  are  united  by 
space.  Man  and  God  are  not  divided,  they  are  united  by 
nature.  Man  is  the  manifestation  of  God.  Get  Plato's  Ab- 
solute out  of  the  way  and  God  has  no  difficulty  in  getting 
into  His  world.  He  is  always  there. 

So  much  for  nature  or  substance;  now  what  is  person? 
Persona,  from  which  person  is  derived,  is  the  Latin  name  for 
the  mask  that  the  actor  wore  on  the  stage  to  designate  the 
character  he  was  playing.  His  mask  was  his  distinction.  Ac- 
cording to  his  mask  he  was  playing  this  character  and  not 
that.  He  came  and  went  according  to  the  cue  of  his  mask. 
So  the  Latin  writers  came  to  use  this  word  to  signify  dis- 
tinction or  character.  The  persona  of  a  man  is  that  which  is 
peculiar  to  him;  by  his  personality  he  is  separated  from  all 
other  human  beings, — as  we  say,  "no  two  persons  are  ex- 
actly alike."  Later  "person"  came  to  mean  the  man  himself. 
Persona  was  the  ego, — the  I  am, — which  lay  behind  and  held 
together  the  nature  of  the  man ;  its  thoughts  and  feelings  and 
actions  were  the  thoughts  and  feelings  and  actions  of  such  a 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  247 

person.  The  Greeks  to  express  this  meaning  used  the  word 
hupostasis,  that  which  stands  under  and  upholds,  the  bind- 
ing, sustaining  principle  in  each  man  which  makes  him  one 
and  not  many.  Personality  is  distinction.  We  speak  of  a 
man  as  a  great  personality,  because  the  distinctive  elements 
in  his  nature  separate  him  from  the  vulgar. 

When  theology  came  to  apply  the  term  persona  to  the 
Absolute,  it  was  guilty  of  an  incurable  contradiction;  one 
might  as  well  speak  of  a  square  circle.  Personality  is  limi- 
tation and  a  limited  Absolute  is  just  no  Absolute  at  all.  In 
spite  of  its  twisting  and  turning,  the  Christian  theology  when 
it  gave  divine  personality  to  Christ  was  polytheistic  to  the 
core.  Its  Trinity,  in  spite  of  all  its  shrieking,  is  three  gods 
and  never  one,  and  the  Christian  dogma  naively  recognizes 
this  fact  in  assigning  to  each  of  its  three  gods  separate  func- 
tions. It  teaches  its  children  to  say:  "I  believe  in  God  the 
Father  who  made  me  and  all  the  world  and  in  God  the  Son 
who  redeemed  me  and  all  mankind,  and  in  God  the  Holy 
Ghost  who  sanctifieth  me  and  all  the  people  of  God."  There 
you  have  three  persons,  each  person  having  a  different  char- 
acter and  playing  a  different  part.  Now,  if  you  say  that  the 
three  persons  are  one  god  in  the  substance  of  the  god-head, 
you  do  not  make  them  one  any  more  than  you  make  three 
men  one,  by  saying  they  are  one  in  the  substance  of  humani- 
ty. Of  course  they  are;  but  what  of  it? 

The  blame  of  all  this  lies  with  the  Absolute,  which  James 
in  his  wrath  damned.  If  it  were  not  for  the  Absolute  we 
should  not  be  wandering  in  and  out  and  around  about  in 
these  theological  tortuosities,  singing  "three  in  one"  and  "one 
in  three"  as  if  we  were  children  playing  puzzle.  We  should 
just  take  "God"  simply,  as  the  primitive  man  took  him  and 
as  the  plain  folk  take  him  to-day,  as  he  comes  to  us  in  the 
light  and  in  the  dark,  in  the  voices  of  our  solitude  and  in  the 
faces  of  our  friends.  As  St.  Thomas  a  Kempis  says :  "It  is 
better  to  love  God  than  to  define  him." 

And  the  pity  of  it  all  is  that  it  makes  God  uninteresting. 
Jesus  ben  Joseph,  forcing  the  issue  in  Jerusalem ;  giving  voice 


248  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

in  the  Courts  of  the  Temple  to  a  denunciatory  eloquence  un- 
equalled in  the  history  of  oratory;  bidding  farewell  to  his 
friends,  when  he  knows  death  is  at  hand,  with  a  pathos  that 
moves  the  heart;  standing  before  Pilate  in  a  way  that  wins 
the  admiration  of  his  judge;  dying  with  the  cry,  "Why  hast 
thou  forsaken  me?"  on  his  lips, — all  that  has  a  deep  abiding 
interest  that  wins  and  holds  the  heart.  But  to  think  of 
Christus,  the  Son  of  the  Absolute,  Light  of  Light,  God  out 
of  God,  Very  God  of  Very  God,  Begotten  and  not  made, 
being  of  one  substance  with  the  Father  (of  whom  we  must 
be  careful  not  to  divide  the  person  nor  confound  the  natures), 
— all  that  is  as  interesting  as  a  chemical  formula,  useful,  it 
may  be,  to  the  chemist,  but  to  the  common  man,  a  mere  ar- 
rangement of  words.  If  the  chemist  can  turn  his  formula 
into  a  living,  burning  light  under  our  eyes,  well!  if  not, — 
we  sleep  while  he  lectures. 

Poor  Jesus  ben  Joseph,  in  all  that  thou  hast  gained  in  di- 
vine substance  and  personality,  thou  hast  lost  the  more  in 
human  interest  and  devotion. 


CHAPTER  LII 
The  Celestial  Caesar 

In  the  year  410  of  the  present  era,  the  Goths,  under  the 
command  of  their  chieftain  Alaric,  took  and  sacked  the  city 
of  Rome.  This  event  filled  all  the  civilized  world  with  as- 
tonishment and  terror.  It  seemed  to  those  then  living  as  if 
the  end  of  the  world  had  come.  The  Mediterranean  civiliza- 
tion, bereft  of  its  imperial  City,  sank  into  a  sullen  and  a  dumb 
despair.  There  was  no  comfort  in  the  present  and  no  hope 
for  the  future.  Rome,  which  for  twelve  centuries  had  been 
the  dominant  city  of  the  then  known  world,  was  now  the 
prey  of  the  barbarian.  Her  patricians,  bound  with  cords, 
were  sold  into  slavery ;  her  matrons  were  given  to  the  rude 
embrace  of  the  bearded  men  of  the  north ;  her  treasures  were 
pillaged  to  enrich  the  stranger.  What  Rome  had  so  often 
inflicted  upon  other  cities,  she  now  suffered  within  her  own 
walls.  She  who  had  been  the  mistress  of  a  world  was  the 
captive  of  a  tribe.  She  had  enjoyed  her  long  day  of  triumph, 
but  now  the  night  of  disaster  had  fallen  upon  her.  No  won- 
der that  the  world  trembled  when  Rome  fell. 

Those  who  were  of  the  old  faith,  worshippers  of  Jupiter 
Capitolinus,  ascribed  these  calamities  to  the  wrath  of  the 
ancient  gods,  because  men  had  forsaken  them  and  gone  over 
to  the  worship  of  the  parvenu  gods  of  the  Semitic  dynasty. 
Christus,  with  his  specious  promises  of  life  after  death,  had 
charmed  the  people  away  from  the  altars  of  Saturn  and 
Venus,  of  Jupiter  and  Mars,  who  had  in  their  keeping  the 
good  things  of  this  world ;  who  through  all  the  centuries  had 
given  Rome  victory  over  her  enemies  and  enriched  her  with 
the  spoils  of  conquered  lands.  "Back  to  Jupiter!"  was  the 
cry  of  the  Pagan.  "Back  to  Jupiter!  Away  with  these  sor- 

251 


252        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

did  gods  of  the  Jew,  who  do  not  and  cannot  care  for  the  City 
of  Rome." 

It  was  this  cry  of  the  defeated  gods  of  the  old  regime  that 
roused  St.  Augustine,  the  greatest  mind  then  living,  to  come 
to  the  rescue  of  the  god  of  the  religion  to  which  he  himself 
had  been  recently  converted.  The  taking  and  the  sacking  of 
Rome  gave  to  Augustine  occasion  and  inspiration  to  write 
the  greatest  of  all  his  books, — and  they  are  many, — called  by 
him  "De  Civitate  Dei", — "Concerning  the  City  of  God."  In 
the  City  of  God  Augustine  not  only  defended  the  Christian 
religion  against  the  assaults  of  its  enemies,  but  he  also  or- 
ganized that  religion  into  a  consistent  scheme  to  meet  con- 
ditions consequent  upon  the  fall  of  Rome.  In  the  place  of 
the  city  of  the  Caesars  he  put  the  city  of  God. 

The  Deus  or  God  of  Augustine  was  none  other  than  Caesar 
himself,  clothed  with  omnipotence,  enthroned  in  the  heavens 
as  the  absolute  ruler  of  the  world.  Nowhere  is  the  process 
of  evolution  more  evident  than  in  the  development  of  the 
God  of  the  Hebrew  religion  and  the  god  of  the  Greek  philoso- 
phy into  the  God  of  the  Roman  Church.  This  god  of  August- 
ine is  the  Absolute  of  Plato  identified  with  the  Jehovah  of 
Isaiah  and  endowed  with  the  political  power  of  the  Roman 
Caesar. 

The  City  of  God  of  which  Augustine  treats  was  no  ideal 
city,  out  of  the  sight  and  sound  of  man ;  it  was  a  city  popu- 
lous and  powerful ;  a  city  that  conquered  Rome  a  century  be- 
fore Alaric,  the  Goth,  had  set  foot  in  Italy.  It  was  a  new 
Rome  born  out  of  the  old.  As  a  city  it  was  highly  organized 
and  effective  to  take  up  and  carry  on  the  work  of  ruling  the 
world,  which  had  been  of  old  and  was  to  be  far  into  the 
future  the  mission  of  the  City  of  Rome.  That  City  of  God 
of  which  Augustine  wrote  was  none  other  than  the  Chris- 
tian church  of  which  Rome  even  then  was  considered  the 
capital ;  a  claim  which  Rome  was  destined  to  press  in  season 
and  out  of  season  until  she  became  once  more  the  ruling  city 
of  the  Western  world. 

Christianity  owes  its  religious  conceptions  to  the  genius 
of  the  Hebrew  prophets ;  its  dogma  is  the  product  of  the  sub- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  253 

tie  mind  of  the  Greek  philosopher;  its  organization  is  the 
work  of  the  Roman  lawyer.  #A.  century  and  more  before 
Augustine  had  written  his  book  concerning  the  City  of  God, 
Cyprian,  bishop  of  Carthage,  had  written  his  epoch-making 
treatise  "De  Catholicae  Ecclesiae  Unitate", — "Concerning  the 
Unity  of  the  Catholic  Church."  Cyprian  was  a  brilHant  and 
a  successful  lawyer  who  was  converted  to  Christianity  in  mid- 
dle life,  bringing  to  the  service  of  that  religion  the  training 
and  the  mental  attitude  of  his  profession.  His  conversion  was 
the  delight  of  the  church  and  the  despair  of  the  outside  world. 
When  men  of  the  character  and  ability  of  Cyprian  embraced 
the  fortunes  of  Jesus  it  was  no  longer  possible  to  speak  of 
Jesus  and  his  following  after  the  manner  of  Tacitus.  In  the 
days  of  Cyprian  Christianity  was  already  becoming  respect- 
able; it  was  still  persecuted  but  the  persecution  gave  it  eclat. 
Cyprian  himself  died  for  the  faith,  but  he  died  with  the  dig- 
nity of  a  Roman  and  not  with  the  sordidness  of  the  slave. 
The  time  had  passed  when  men  could  become  living  torches 
to  light  the  revels  of  drunken  emperors. 

At  the  time  of  his  martyrdom  Cyprian  was  bishop  of  Carth- 
age; at  the  outbreak  of  the  persecution  in  the  reign  of  the 
emperor  Decius,  Cyprian,  at  the  prayer  of  his  people,  went 
into  retirement.  Under  Gallus,  the  persecution  being  re- 
laxed, the  bishop  returned  to  Carthage  and  was  active  in  the 
work  of  the  church.  When  Valerian  succeeded  to  the  empire 
the  persecution  was  renewed  and  Cyprian  was  first  banished, 
then  recalled  and  beheaded,  to  the  sorrow  not  only  of  the 
Christian  community,  but  also  to  the  regret  of  the  people  of 
Carthage  in  general ;  for  he  was  a  great  and  a  good  man,  of 
whom  the  city  was  proud. 

When  Cyprian  came  to  his  episcopate,  he  found  his  dio- 
cese rent  by  schism  and  sorely  troubled  by  heresies.     The 
Christian  churches  scattered  throughout  the  empire  were  more 
or  less  at  odds  with  one  another — they  differed  both  in  mat- 
ters of  faith  and  in  rules  of  discipline.     There  was  no  central 
recognized  authority  to  which  disputes  could  be  referred  for 
settlement;  each  church  was  more  or  less  a  law  unto  itself, 
subject  only  to  the  binding  force  of  the  Christian  tradition. 


254        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

It  was  to  meet  and  to  correct  the  evils  consequent  upon  this 
lack  of  organization  that  Cyprian  propounded  his  theory  of  the 
church  in  his  treatise  "De  Unitate." 

Being  a  lawyer  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Cyprian  followed  the 
lines  of  organization  with  which  he  was  familiar.  In  the 
Empire  power  was  centralized  in  the  emperor.  In  theory 
the  Imperium  was  conferred  by  the  Senate;  in  fact,  it  was 
the  prize  of  the  successful  general,  but  whether  chosen  by  the 
Senate  or  acclaimed  by  the  legions,  the  emperor,  when  once 
an  emperor,  was  the  master  of  Rome.  His  word  was  law, 
his  power  personal  and  absolute.  He  could  put  men  to  death 
or  banish  them  to  Scythia  without  trial.  He  alone  was  res- 
ponsible for  the  safety  of  Rome,  he  appointed  the  officers  of 
the  State,  he  sent  the  pro-consuls  to  rule  the  provinces.  From 
the  farthest  confines  of  Britain  to  the  borders  of  Parthia  there 
was  not  a  man  so  great  that  the  emperor  could  not  destroy 
him.  When  the  emperor  had  put  a  man  over  a  city  that  man 
was  not  a  servant  of  the  people,  he  was  the  vicar  of  the  em- 
peror. In  other  words,  the  government  of  Imperial  Rome 
was  government  based  upon  authority  centered  in  a  person. 

It  was  this  system  of  government  that  Cyprian  applied  to 
the  uses  of  the  Christian  church.  The  Christian  church  was 
the  City  of  God,  even  as  the  city  of  Rome  was  the  city  of 
Caesar.  All  authority  was  centered  in  God,  and  God  was  a 
person.  In  ruling  the  world,  God  delegated  his  power  to 
persons  chosen  by  himself.  The  church  was  his  creation ; 
God  gave  power  to  Jesus  Christ  to  found  his  church.  Jesus 
Christ,  in  turn,  gave  power  to  Peter  to  govern  the  church. 
Peter  went  to  Rome  and  established  the  church  in  that  city 
and  gave  to  his  successor  in  the  bishopric  of  that  church,  for 
all  time,  the  powers  of  government  in  and  over  the  church. 
The  various  bishops  of  the  various  churches  derived,  each 
his  authority,  not  from  the  people,  but  from  God  through 
Christ  and  then  through  Peter  and  the  Apostles.  The  peo- 
ple might  designate  whom  they  would  like  to  have  for  their 
bishop,  but  they  could  never  make  him  their  bishop.  Before 
he  could  exercise  that  office  he  must  receive  power  and  au- 
thority from  God,  through  Christ,  from  Peter  as  the  Vicar 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  255 

of  Christ,  and  the  Apostles;  through  the  laying  on  of  hands 
by  the  bishops,  who  conveyed  the  electric  current  of  power 
and  authority  down  the  line.  This  theory  laid  down  by  Cyp- 
rian established  itself  by  force  of  circumstances  and  is  to  this 
day  the  theory  of  all  churches  claiming  to  be  apostolic.  It 
is  the  theory  of  the  Roman,  Greek,  and  Anglican  churches, — 
which  differ  from  one  another  only  as  to  the  share  which  the 
other  apostles  have  with  Peter  in  the  possession  and  exercise 
of  this  delegated  authority;  Rome  says  they  have  none,  the 
Greek  and  the  Anglican  deny  this,  and  say  that  the  apostles 
share  and  share  alike  in  this  gift  of  authority.  This  doctrine 
is  destructive  of  unity.  Rome  has  the  logic  of  the  theory; 
hence  Rome  prevails.  But  wherever  this  theory  is  held, 
whether  in  Rome,  Oxford,  or  Moscow,  the  status  of  God  is 
the  same.  God  is  the  absolute  ruler  of  the  church  and, 
through  the  church,  of  the  world.  By  a  carefully  arranged 
machinery  he  appoints  the  officers  of  the  church  who  are  to 
rule  both  church  and  world.  When  a  man  is  once  a  bishop 
he  is  so  by  divine  right;  he  is  not  the  servant  of  the  people, 
he  is  the  Vicar  of  God.  This  is  not  only  true  of  the  pope  or 
the  bishop,  but  of  every  officer  of  the  church  down  to  the 
last  little  priestling  ordained  by  the  bishop. 

It  was  to  the  establishment  of  this  theory  that  St.  Augustine 
dedicated  his  great  genius :  he  saw  in  the  fall  of  Rome  the 
opportunity  of  God.  God  could  now  reign  in  Rome  in  the 
person  of  his  Vicar.  The  imperialistic  conception  of  God, 
which  was  held  by  Augustine  in  common  with  the  Roman 
lawyers,  separated  God  from  the  people.  God  was  the  sov- 
ereign, the  people  were  the  subjects;  it  was  for  God  to  com- 
mand, for  the  people  to  obey.  God  was  majesty,  might,  and 
power,  the  people  must  bow  before  his  majesty,  tremble  at 
his  might,  and  suffer  the  exercise  of  his  power.  The  God  of 
Augustine  has  nothing  of  the  vacillation  of  Jehovah ;  he  does 
not  repent  that  he  made  man  because  man  is  wicked, — God 
made  man  to  be  wicked,  that  in  the  punishment  of  that 
wickedness  God  might  be  glorified.  Nor  has  the  God  of 
Augustine  anything  of  the  vagueness  of  the  Greek  Father- 
God,  who  can  do  nothing  except  through  the  Son. 


256        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

With  Augustine  God  is  God,  and  that  is  the  end  of  the  mat- 
ter. What  God  wants  to  do  God  can  do, — and  God  does  do. 
He  is  the  Absolute  sovereign,  Nothing  happens  without  his 
will ;  we  are  what  we  are,  we  do  what  we  do,  we  suffer  what 
we  suffer,  all  in  accordance  with  the  will  of  God.  This  con- 
ception of  God  was  congenial  to  the  Roman  mind.  If  one 
asks  why  this  is  so,  the  answer  is :  It  is  the  will  of  God.  Why 
am  I  sick?  It  is  the  will  of  God.  Why  am  I  poor?  It  is 
the  will  of  God.  Why  am  I  in  prison?  It  is  the  will  of  God. 
God  is  personal  will  enthroned  in  the  universe,  commanding 
the  universe. 

It  is  this  imperial  God  who  rules  in  the  Catholic  church 
through  his  vicar,  the  pope,  who  rules  in  every  diocese  through 
his  vicar,  the  bishop,  and  in  every  parish  church  through  his 
vicar  the  priest.  There  is  nothing  indefinite  here;  God  is 
God,  and  there  is  none  beside  him.  This  is  God's  vicar,  his 
word  is  law.  God  is  in  his  holy  temple,  let  all  the  earth 
keep  silence  before  him.  I,  his  Pope,  his  bishop,  his  priest, 
speak  in  his  name.  Listen  and  obey. 


CHAPTER  LIII 
God  Almighty:  Creator  of  Heaven  and  Hell 

Augustine,  in  common  with  all  the  doctors  of  the  church, 
accepted  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  as  of  divine  inspiration  and 
authority,  they  were  the  very  word  of  God,  expressing  his 
will.  But  Augustine  did  what  every  one  must  do;  he  in- 
terpreted those  writings  in  the  light  of  his  own  genius  to  ac- 
commodate them  to  the  conditions  of  his  own  time  and  place. 
In  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  Jehovah  is  the  creator  of  the  heav- 
ens and  the  earth.  In  the  scheme  of  creation  the  earth  oc- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  257 

cupied  the  central  position  as  the  scene  of  the  activities  of 
Jehovah.     The  heavens  ministered  to  the  earth. 

In  the  days  when  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  were  written, 
man  was  of  the  earth,  earthy.  On  the  earth  man's  life  was 
lived,  in  the  earth  man  rested  after  his  life  was  over.  Man 
was  not  yet  capable  of  aspiring  to  any  other  life  than  the  life 
that  he  lived  as  a  denizen  of  the  earth.  The  Hebrew  writers 
had  in  their  minds  no  such  conception  as  we  hold  when  we 
speak  of  heaven.  The  Hebrew  did  not  think  of  himself  as 
personally  immortal.  The  only  immortality  that  he  craved 
was  the  immortality  of  the  tribe.  Israel  was  to  live  forever 
and  keep  Jehovah's  name  alive  in  the  earth.  There  were  no 
mansions  in  the  skies  that  Israel  coveted ;  his  heart  was  de- 
voted to  his  own  land,  with  its  vines  and  its  fig  trees.  His 
desire  was  for  length  of  days.  He  that  would  live  long  and 
see  good  days  must  eschew  evil  and  do  good ;  must  seek 
peace  and  ensue  it.  Length  of  days  was  the  reward  of  virtue 
to  the  Israelite. 

Even  after  the  Hebrew  thinkers  had  assimilated  the  thought 
of  a  personal  life  after  death,  they  still  made  the  earth  the 
scene  of  that  life's  activities.  The  resurrection  from  the  dead 
was  a  resurrection  to  and  a  renewal  of  the  earthly  life.  Jer- 
usalem glorified  and  triumphant ;  the  Jew  the  dominant  peo- 
ple, with  abundance  of  bread  and  wine  to  strengthen  and 
make  glad  his  heart  was  all  that  the  Jew  asked  of  Jehovah. 
That  granted,  the  Jew  would  sing  the  Lord's  songs  in  the 
Lord's  house  until  all  the  world  should  hear  that  song  and 
praise  the  name  of  Jehovah  of  Hosts.  As  for  a  home  beyond 
the  sky,  the  Jew  never  dreamed  of  such  a  thing, — nor  desired 
it. 
X"  As  for  hell  as  described  by  Christian  theology,  neither  the 

f  Jew  nor  the  Pagan  ever  conceived  of  such  a  place  of  torment. 

:  Hell  is  the  gift  of  Christianity  to  humanity.  Death  was  un- 
desirable to  the  Hebrew  and  the  ancient  man  in  general  sim- 
ply because  it  was  the  absence  of  life.  This  attitude  of  mind 
is  set  forth  with  clearness  in  the  prayer  of  Hezekiah  in  Isaiah, 
XXXVIII.  The  sick  king  laments  his  coming  death  in  a 
manner  congenial  to  the  belief  of  his  time : 


258        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

I  said  in  the  cutting  off  of  my  days  I  shall  go  to  the 
gates  of  the  grave.  I  am  deprived  of  the  residue  of  my 
years.  I  said  I  shall  not  see  the  Lord,  even  the  Lord 
in  the  land  of  the  living.  I  shall  behold  man  no  more 
with  the  inhabitants  of  the  world.  Mine  age  is  departed 
and  removed  from  me  as  a  shepherd's  tent.  I  have  cut 
off  like  a  weaver  my  life ;  he  will  cut  me  off  with  pining 
sickness ;  from  day  even  to  night  will  thou  make  an  end 
of  me. 

Here  is  regret  for  departed  life  but  no  fear  of  coming 
horror;  darkness  and  silence  and  a  life  gone  out, — and  that  is 
all.  The  Hebrew  did  not  have  even  so  vague  a  notion  of 
life  after  death  as  prevailed  quite  generally  in  the  Gentile 
world ;  a  life  of  semi-consciousness  in  the  grave,  dependent 
for  what  little  satisfaction  there  was  in  it  upon  the  remem- 
brance and  ministration  of  the  living.  But  as  for  a  life  after 
death  of  exquisite  happiness  or  of  exquisite  misery  it  never 
entered  his  mind.  Heaven  and  hell  were  undiscovered  coun- 
tries to  the  ancient  Hebrew  mind. 

These  regions  were  brought  into  view  by  the  Christian 
theologians  and  their  topography  was  very  largely  the  work 
of  the  Roman  lawyers.^  To  Augustine,  more  than  to  any 
other  man,  is  owing  those  clear  outlines  of  heaven  and  hell, 
— especially  of  hell, — which  have  made  these  places  such 
realities  to  the  Christian  mind-  In  Augustine's  time  men 
were  like  Caius  Cassius,  "aweary  of  the  world". 

The  earth  had  lost  its  charm.  Men  living  in  cities,  as 
did  Augustine,  had  ceased  to  be  familiar  with  the  gods  of 
the  countryside;  they  were  not  refreshed  by  the  waters  of 
Arethusa,  nor  did  they  walk  in  the  light  of  Artemis. 

We  must  never  forget  that  Christianity  was  a  religion  of 
the  city;  it  made  little  or  no  headway  in  the  country.  So 
much  was  this  the  case  that  those  that  were  not  Christians 
in  the  days  of  Augustine  were  called  Pagans,  or  countrymen- 

And  city  life  with  its  corrupt  politics  and  its  licentious 
society  had  become  an  abomination  to  the  Christian.  To 
him  the  world  was  very  evil,  its  times  were  waxing  late. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  259 

This  earth  instead  of  being  the  principle  scene  of  the  acti- 
vities of  God  and  man,  was  but  an  episode,  lying  between 
heaven  and  hell.  Man's  life  on  the  earth  was  under  a  curse ; 
instead  of  being  the  home  of  man  it  was  his  place  of  banish- 
ment. God  was  not  in  the  earth,  he  was  in  heaven,  and  only 
by  leaving  earth  could  a  man  gain  admittance  to  the  presence 
of  God-  So  that  to  this  day  we  say  of  a  man  who  has  died, 
that  he  has  gone  to  his  God;  as  if  when  alive  he  was  not 
with  his  God. 

In  this  scheme  of  Augustine,  God  is  not  Jehovah,  Creator 
of  heaven  and  earth ;  he  is  God  Almighty,  Creator  of  heaven 
and  hell.  Heaven  is  his  throne-room,  hell  is  his  dungeon. 
His  throne-room  was  thronged  with  his  subjects,  his  dun- 
geon was  crowded  with  his  enemies.  God  created  for  his 
own  purposes  both  heaven  and  hell- 
In  the  days  of  Augustine  what  was  left  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  decrepit  and  senile,  was,  in  the  person  of  its  em- 
peror, rapidly  assuming  the  guise  of  an  Oriental  despotism. 
All  of  the  simplicity  of  the  Republic  and  of  the  early  Empire 
was  gone.  The  emperor, — instead  of  living,  as  did  Augustus 
Caesar,  in  his  own  house  as  a  simple  citizen,  coming 
and  going  as  any  private  man,  plain  in  his  dress,  austere 
in  his  habit, — lived  in  a  palace  of  a  thousand  rooms, 
thronged  with  eunuchs,  crowded  with  sycophants,  the  scene 
of  license  and  luxury;  the  emperor  himself  secluded  and 
worshipped  as  a  god.  Clothed  in  purple,  crowned  with  gold, 
seated  on  ivory,  he  received  the  obeisance  of  the  people. 
The  meanest  and  the  greatest  were  on  equality  when  they 
were  in  the  presence  of  the  emperor-  Etiquette  banished 
simplicity,  so  that  life  in  the  palace  of  the  Caesar  was  bur- 
densome, dangerous,  and  tedious;  he  who  came  into  that  pal- 
ace must  come  richly  clothed.  A  frown  on  the  face  of  the 
emperor  meant  death.  If  the  emperor  smiled  the  man  must 
smile  and  stand  just  so.  When  Constantine  removed  the 
seat  of  empire  from  Rome  to  Byzantium  and  built  there 
his  new  Rome,  which  was  called  after  his  name,  Constan- 
tinople, he  not  only  changed  the  place,  he  changed  the  char- 
acter of  the  capitol  city.  Rome  could  never  altogether  divest 


260        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

herself  of  the  vestiges  of  her  Republican  simplicity.  Con- 
stantinople had  no  such  past  She  entered  at  once  upon  that 
career  of  luxury  and  despotism  which  has  been  her  experience 
ever  since. 

So  it  was  with  God.  When  Jehovah  removed  his  capitol 
city  from  earth  to  heaven,  he  not  only  changed  the  place,  he 
changed  the  character  of  his  divinity.  As  long  as  he  dwelt 
in  Jerusalem  God  could  not  rid  himself  altogether  of  the  asso- 
ciations of  the  desert;  the  grit  of  the  sand  is  in  his  hair,  the 
tan  of  the  desert  is  on  his  cheek,  the  smell  of  the  sheep-fold 
clings  to  his  garments.  He  is  a  god  who  has  known  hard- 
ships; he  has  sat  cross-legged  in  the  door  of  Abraham's 
tent-  Such  was  the  god  Jehovah,  and  even  Jerusalem  could 
not  rob  him  of  his  rusticity.  But  when  he  becomes  God 
Almighty,  and  has  removed  his  capitol  city  from  earth  to 
heaven,  then  all  this  simplicity  is  gone  and  in  its  place  is  a 
meritricious,  Oriental,  despotic  court.  God  sits  on  his 
throne,  Cherubim  and  Seraphim  veil  their  face  before  him ; 
the  whole  atmosphere  is  laden  with  the  fulsome  praises  of 
His  Majesty-  God  exists  only  to  be  praised.  His  own  hap- 
piness and  glory  is  his  single  thought.  If  we  may  believe 
the  theologians,  God  created  man  simply  to  praise  Him.  Any 
slightest  thought  of  criticism  of  His  Divine  Majesty  is  pun- 
ished with  banishment  from  heaven  to  the  torments  of  hell. 
Lucifer,  son  of  morning,  falls  from  heaven  because  he  will 
not  bow  before  the  Great  White  Throne. 

This  conception  of  God  and  heaven  is  Constantinopoli- 
tanism  pure  and  simple ;  it  has  been  the  ideal  both  of  Caesar 
and  Sultan  from  the  foundation  of  that  city  to  this  day- 
And  it  is  upon  this  conception  that  Western  Christendom  has 
fed  its  imagination  for  nearly  two  thousand  years. 

As  in  the  palace  of  the  Duke  of  Ferrara,  the  dungeon  foul 
and  dark  and  filthy  was  under  the  banquet  room,  so  it  was 
in  the  city  of  God.  The  fires  of  hell  were  raging  under- 
neath the  golden  streets  of  the  new  Jerusalem. 

Only  a  decadent^  and  dying  civilization  could  have  given 
birth  to  any  such  conception  as '  tHg~€n"ristian  fiell^;  that 
conception  has  in  it  a  'refinement  of  cruelty,  possible  only 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  261 

to  a  depraved  mind,  and  the  mind  of  Augustine,  great  as 
it  was,  was  depraved.  It  could  not  help  being  depraved;  it 
was  born,  lived,  and  died  in  an  atmosphere  of  depravity. 
For  centuries  the  Roman  had  steeped  his  soul  in  cruelty. 
What  to  us  would  be  shocking  beyond  endurance  was  to  him 
a  matter  of  every  day  occurrence.  Augustine's  conception 
of  hell  was  born  of  the  cruelties  of  the  empire.  God,  in 
his  conception,  is  more  cruel  than  Nero:  for  Nero  did  not 
create  his  victims,  and  he  could  only  burn  them  for  an  hour 
at  the  most.  God  did  create  his  victims,  and  he  could  burn 
them  through  eternity- 
Augustine  devotes  two  chapters, — Chapter  XXI  and  Chap- 
ter XXII —of  "The  City  of  God"  to  prove  that  God  can,  by 
his  creative  power,  keep  a  human  body  of  flesh  and  blood 
and  bone  and  nerve  alive  through  all  eternity  in  order  that 
he  may  burn  it  in  the  fires  of  his  wrath.  Beyond  this,  a 
conception  of  cruelty  cannot  go. 

As  the  king  punishes  treason  with  the  greatest  severity, 
so  God  visits  heresy  and  schism,  which  are  acts  of  treason 
against  the  City  of  God,  with  a  penalty  beyond  the  punish- 
ment of  adultery  and  murder.  For  the  heretic  the  fires  of  hell 
burn  hotter  than  for  the  common  criminal.  Soon  after  the 
time  of  Augustine,  the  church,  that  she  might  be  pleasing 
to  her  Lord,  entered  upon  that  career  of  cruelty  which  is 
one  of  the  darkest  blots  on  the  pages  of  human  history- 
The  church  in  all  its  branches  would  gladly  forget  these 
passages  in  her  history.  But  the  student  can  never  forget; 
these  transactions  have  singed  and  charred  the  very  nerves 
of  human  race  memory;  so  that  at  the  thought  of  them  the 
soul  winces.  From  the  day  when  the  monks  of  Alexandria 
stripped  the  beautiful  and  gifted  Hypatia  naked  and  scraped 
her  quivering  flesh  from  her  bones  with  shells  to  the  day 
when  Henry  VIII  and  his  priests  burned  Anne  Askew  in  the 
fire ;  from  the  days  when  the  priests  of  Rome  burned  Gior- 
dano Bruno  in  the  Piazza,  del  Fiore  to  the  days  when  the 
priests  of  England  heaped  scorn  on  the  head  of  the  venerable 
Darwin,  more  cruel  deeds  have  been  done  in  the  name  of 
God  Almighty  than  I,  for  one,  would  care,  if  I  were  God,  to 


262         THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

be  responsible  for.     Well  did  Jesus  say:  "He  that  killeth 
you  will  think  he  doeth  God  service." 

It  is  to  be  said  for  primitive  and  pure  Christianity  that 

i    this  conception  was   foreign   to  its  mind.     As  long  as  the 

\  religion  was  in  the  keeping  of  the  working  class  it  did  not 

1  easily  lend  itself  to  such  extremes.     The  mind  of  the  early 

1  /  church  was  tender  toward  suffering  as  having  itself  suffered. 

V    It  remembered  the  prayer  of  its  Founder  for  his  persecutors 

and  in  its  hour  of  agony  it  prayed  for  surcease  of  pain. 

Chis  notion  of  hell  we  owe  to  the  Roman  lawyer;  and  the 
is  always  cruel- __  Human  government  has,  until  very 
recently,  been  (and,  in  a  measure,  is  even  now)  based  on 
fraud  and  violence ;  it  is  haunted  by  fear  and  buttressed  by 
punishment;  its  safeguards  are  the  dungeon  and  the  gibbet. 
It  knows  nothing  of  the  love  that  casts  out  all  fear  and  walks 
defenseless  as  Daniel  into  the  den  of  the  lions.  Man  is  for 
the  most  part  like  Robespierre:  he  can  think  of  government 
only  as  a  killing.  Here  is  a  woman  who  is  suspected  of  in- 
civism ;  what  shall  we  do  with  her?  Send  her  to  the  guil- 
lotine !  Here  is  a  man  whose  patriotism  is  shady ;  what  shall 
we  do  with  him?  Send  him  to  the  guillotine!  So  it  was  all 
day  long, — to  the  guillotine!  to  the  guillotine!  to  the  guil- 
lotine ! — until  Robespierre  has  guillotined  all  that  was  virtuous 
£d  noble  in  France  and  then  comes,  himself,  under  the  axe. 
But  alas,  and  alack  a  day!  that  we  should  have  ascribed  such 
npidity  to  our  God !  Here  is  a  woman  who  differs  from 
your  priests  in  hfir  teaching;  what  shall  we  do  with  her? 
Torture  her  and  send  her  to  hell-  Here  is  a  man  whose 
orthodoxy  is  in  doubt;  what  shall  we  do  with  him?  Oh, 
burn  him  and  send  him  to  hell !  Here  is  a  nation  that  has 
never  heard  of  your  plan  of  salvation;  what  shall  we  do  with 
it?  Oh,  just  send  it  to  hell;  until  hell  is  all  peopled  by  the 
noblest  souls  that  ever  breathed  the  breath  of  human  life. 

All  this  is  so  stupid  that  it  is  ridiculous,  and  the  wonder 
is  that  men  could  ever  have  been  so  crassly  idiotic  in  their 
minds.  The  Christian  world  owes  a  profound  apology  to  the 
so-called  heathen  world  for  sending  all  its  saints  and  sages. 
unseen,  unheard,  to  the  Christian  hell.  It  was  not  fair  to  God 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  263 

nor  to  the  heathen  and  sage.     It  was,  however,  a  great  com- 
pliment to  hell.     It  makes  hell  desirable. 

/'The  excuse  for  all  this  is  that  hell  is  born  of  a  horror  for\ 
sin.  But  of  all  the  sins  of  which  man  can  be  guilty,  cruelty/f 
js  the  greatest;  and  hell  is  cruelty  deified.  f 

O  my  brothers  and  my  sisters,  is  it  not  time  that  you  and 
I  came  out  from  under  our  bondage  to  the  Roman  lawyer, 
and  delivered  ourselves  and  our  God  from  the  cruel  libel 
which  these  have  laid  against  him  and  us?  We  have  no  sin 
and  can  have  no  sin  that  deserves  eternal  torture.  God 
Almighty  Creator  of  Heaven  and  hell  never  did  exist,  never 
can  exist!  Let  us  forget  him. 


CHAPTER    LIV 
The   Wrath   of   God 

In  the  Augustine  scheme,  Jesus  ben  Joseph  is  not  the  God 
Christus,  worshipped  by  the  common  people;  his  business  is 
not,  primarily,  to  inform  them  with  his  wisdom,  to  win  them 
by  his  tenderness,  to  lead  them  in  the  way  of  righteousness. 
His  relation  to  the  people  is  subordinated  to  his  relation  to 
his  God.  Jesus  did  not  come  into  the  world  to  save  the  world 
by  wisdom  and  by  love,  he  came  to  save  it  by  his  blood.  His 
death  was  not  the  natural  consequence  of  his  course  of  action 
in  antagonizing  the  priest  and  scribe ;  he  did  not  die,  as 
Savonarola  died,  because  his  life  was  dangerous  to  the  exist- 
ing order,  he  was  not  the  victim  of  man's  rage  or  fear;  he 
was  the  victim  of  God's  wrath.  He  was  the  Lamb  of  God, 
slain  from  the  foundation  of  the  world  to  take  away  the  sin 
of  the  world.  God  was  angry  with  the  world  because  of  the  sin 
of  Adam;  Christus,  by  his  death,  appeased  this  anger  of  God. 

This  theory  of  the  nature  and  office  of  the  Christus  has  its 
origin  far  back  in  the  primitive  mind  of  man.  It  is  an  in- 


264  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

heritance  from  the  ages  of  ignorance  and  fear.  Everywhere 
we  find  primitive  man  seeking  to  propitiate  his  god  with 
blood ;  human  and  animal  sacrifice  prevailed  as  soon  as  man 
emerged  into  the  full  consciousness  of  himself  and  the  world 
about  him.  When  he  awakened  in  the  garden  of  Eden,  he 
found  himself  naked  and  he  was  ashamed  and  afraid.  He 
heard  the  voice  of  his  God  calling  in  anger,  and  he  hid  him- 
self- That  is  the  parable  of  man's  life  from  its  earliest  con- 
sciousness down  to  the  present  day.  God  has  always  been 
an  object  of  fear.  Fear  is  the  motive  of  worship.  Listen  to 
the  litanies  that  go  up  to  God  from  the  lips  of  the  priests, 
and  are  they  not  appeals  for  mercy?  All  through  the  ages 
man  has  been  as  a  child  afraid  of  his  father.  And  there  was 
reason  for  it,  since  in  all  the  early  ages  the  fathers  were  bitter 
toward  their  children, — the  little  ones  were  visited  by  the  rod 
for  every  offense.  It  was  a  hard  thing  in  those  days  to  be  a 
child  in  a  grown-up  world. 

Then,  as  always,  man  has  made  God  in  his  own  image.  Man 
looked  on  every  calamity  of  his  life  as  the  infliction  of  an 
angry  god ;  the  flood  and  the  drought,  the  fever  and  the  chill, 
came  not  in  any  order  of  nature,  but  were  the  outbreaks  of 
the  bad  temper  of  the  Gods.  It  is  pitiful  that,  from  the  first, 
man  has  thought  of  the  universe  and  of  the  gods  of  the  uni- 
verse as  unfriendly  to  him-  Have  you  never  passed  a  house 
at  night  and  heard  the  falling  switch  and  the  cry  of  the 
tortured  child?  "Oh,  father,  don't,  don't!  I'll  be  good,  I'll  be 
good,  I'll  be  good !"  And  so  it  is  with  us,  who  are  but  grown- 
up children,  when  we  suffer  the  slings  and  arrows  of  out- 
rageous fortune,  we  lift  up  our  agonized  voices  and  cry  to 
our  God:  "Father,  don't,  don't!  I'll  be  good,  I'll  be  good!" 

In  order  to  keep  the  gods  in  fair  temper,  men  brought  to 
them  of  the  firstlings  of  the  flock  and  the  heifer  of  a  year  old, 
that  the  gods  might  eat  of  the  savory  mess  and  be  satisfied 
and  pleased.  For  man  said :  "A  hungry  god  is  an  angry 
god;  I'll  feed  him  and  keep  him  in  good  humor."  In  the  time 
of  stress  man  said :  "The  god  is  dainty,  he  wants  better  meat 
than  this:  I  will  slay  for  him  my  first  born,  I  will  give  the 
fruit  of  my  body  for  the  sin  of  my  soul."  Out  of  this  fear  of 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  265 

primitive  man,  out  of  his  conception  of  the  gods  as  being 
like  himself,  easily  moved  to  anger  when  cold  and  hungry, 
was  developed  all  that  vast  system  of  animal  sacrifice  which 
was  the  way  of  man's  approach  to  God  in  the  early  stages  of 
his  religious  life. 

As  times  softened  manners  and  man  became  less  a  creature 
of  his  crude  emotions,  these  butcheries  in  the  temple  offended 
his  sensibilities  and  shocked  his  reason-  He  saw  that  the  god 
did  not  eat  of  the  fiesh  that  was  laid  on  his  altar;  all  of  this 
except  the  offal,  was  the  perquisite  of  the  priest.  But  few 
men  had  the  temerity  to  scout  the  whole  system  as  absurd 
and  useless.  A  Micah  here,  an  Isaiah  there,  might  utter  his 
protest,  but  the  custom  was  hoary,  the  tradition  was  sacred, 
and  so  the  temples  continued  to  be  slaughter-houses,  and  priests 
persuaded  the  people  that  the  gods  must  be  fed  with  the 
sacrifice,  else  the  gods  would  be  angry. 

It  was  this  primitive  conception  that  Augustine,  following 
the  lead  of  Paul,  organized  into  a  system  of  religious  doctrine 
and  worship  and  bequeathed  as  a  perpetual  heirloom  to  the 
Christian  church.  The  misery  of  the  world  Paul  and 
Augustine  ascribed  to  the  anger  of  God  at  the  sin  of  Adam- 
Adam  disobeyed  God  and  turned  God  against  him,  and 
not  only  did  Adam  suffer  from  the  wrath  of  God,  but  his  act 
involved  the  whole  race  of  man  down  to  the  last  generation. 
Man,  by  that  act  of  disobedience,  became  evil  in  the  sight  of 
God ;  sin  curdled  his  blood  and  depraved  his  nature.  With 
the  growth  of  the  conception  of  life  after  death  man's  dis- 
obedience involved  not  only  suffering  in  this  present  life  but 
eternal  misery  beyond  the  grave. 

When  one's  reason  is  awake,  one  stands  amazed  in  the 
presence  of  such  a  conception  as  this;  it  is  only  because  it 
has  the  sanction  of  religion  that  it  can  endure  for  a  moment 
under  the  condemnation  of  the  intelligence  and  the  con- 
science. God's  abiding  wrath  on  the  suffering  children  of 
men  is  too  horrible  to  think  of-  Just  think!  God  angry  for 
four  thousand  years.  How  I  pity  him ! 

It  was  necessary  that  this  wrath  should  be  appeased  if 
man  was  ever  to  escape  from  his  misery.  A  scheme  had 


266  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

already  been  devised  by  which  this  anger  of  God  might  be 
turned  away  from  the  sinner  and  fall  upon  the  head  of  an- 
other. The  Priests  of  the  Hebrew  religion  had  worked  out 
an  elaborate  plan  whereby  the  sinner  might  lay  his  sin 
upon  the  head  of  a  victim  and  so  be  free.  He  brought  the 
firstling  of  his  flock  and  laid  his  hand  upon  its  head  and  con- 
fessed his  sin,  and  then  he  killed  the  lamb  and  burned  it  on 
the  altar  as  a  propitiatory  sacrifice;  and  the  blood  of  the 
lamb  was  the  cleansing  of  his  sin- 

/Paul  took  this  thought  of  the  Hebrew  Rabbi  and  made 
basic  to  Christian  theology.  The  death  of  Jesus  on  the 
cross  was  not  the  death  of  a  martyr  to  truth  and  righteous- 
ness ;  it  was  the  death  of  the  Lamb  of  God,  slain  to  take  away 
the  sin  of  the  world.  In  this  theory  it  is  not  the  life,  it 
is  the  death  of  Jesus  that  is  of  supreme  importance.  He 
does  not  die  to  satisfy  the  demand  of  his  own  soul,  he  dies  to 
appease  the  wrath  of  God.  It  is  out  of  this  conception  that 
the  whole  scheme  of  Christian  salvation  has  been  evolved. 
Man  is  saved  from  the  wrath  of  God  by  the  blood  of  Jesus, 
cme  ask — if  one  dare  ask — why  this  elaborate  scheme  was 
necessary  to  bring  about  so  simple  a  matter  as  the  for- 
giveness of  erring  man  by  his  God ;  why  if  God  wanted  to 
forgive  he  couldn't  just  forgive  and  have  done  with  it,  the 
solemn  answer  is  that  God's  justice  must  be  satisfied  before 
his  forgiveness  can  be  given.  And  here  we  have  the  root 
of  the  whole  matter.  Here  we  have  Plato's  Absolute,  which 
William  James  damned,  coming  to  confound  us-  /justice  is 
something  which  exists  in  and  of  itself,  apart  from  God,  and 
controls  hjs  actions ;  God  cannot  be  merciful  lest  justice  be 
offended.  /Justice  must  have  its  victim  before  mercy  can  have 
its  way.  It  is  this  grim  justice  that  has  been  the  occasion  of 
the  greatest  crimes  in  the  human  calendar.  Justice  is  the 
great  god  of  the  lawyer  in  whose  name  the  lawyer  "sends  men 
and  women  to  shameful  death,  shuts  human  souls  away  from 
human  sympathy  in  foul  dungeons,  and  makes  a  felon's  cell 
a  hell  on  earth.  Justice  does  not  look  at  the  sinner,  it  only 
looks  at  the  sin-  Justice  does  not  protect  the  people,  it  only 
guards  the  portals  of  the  king.  Justice  has  been  pictured 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  267 

as  a  blind  woman,  holding  an  even  balance;  it  should  be 
pictured  as  a  grim  and  gory  man  holding  an  axe.  Justice  in 
this  world  has  never  known  how  to  forgive,  only  how  to 
punish.  God's  justice  could  be  satisfied  only  with  the  blood 
of  God's  Son. 

Under  the  impulse  of  this  thought  the  religion  of  Jesus 
ben  Joseph  drifted  far  away  from  its  simplicity;  Jesus  was 
a  disciple  of  Isaiah  and  Micah ;  God  to  him  was  not  anger, 
he  was  love-  The  great  saying  of  Micah  is  the  soul  of  his 
and  of  all  religion : 

Wherewith  shall  I  come  before  the  Lord,  and  bow  myself  before 
the  high  God?  shall  I  come  before  him  with  burnt  offerings,  with  calves 
of  a  year  old? 

Will  the  Lord  be  pleased  with  thousands  of  rams,  or  with  ten 
thousands  of  rivers  of  oil?  shall  I  give  my  first-born  for  my  transgres- 
sion, the  fruit  of  my  body  for  the  sin  of  my  soul? 

He  hath  showed  thee,  O  man,  what  is  good ;  and  what  doth  the 
Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  mercy  and  to  walk 
nimbly  with  thy  God? 

rtal  words !  Almost  the  last  words  that  man  can 
>eak  concerning  himself  in  relation  to  his  God. 
But  far  too  simple  to  satisfy  the  sophisticated  mind  of  the 
rabbi  and  the  lawyer.  Instead  of  this  direct  method  we  have 
the  vast  elaborated  mediums  of  the  doctor  of  the  law.  In 
the  scheme  of  Augustine  the  City  of  God  is  the  place  for 
safety-  Outside  the  church  there  is  no  salvation.  Entrance 
to  the  church  is  in  the  keeping  of  the  priests.  The  church 
lives  by  offering  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  as  a  perpetual  offering 
to  God.  To  be  saved  one  must  be  in  the  communion  of  the 
church,  and  the  communion  of  the  church  is  guarded  by  its 
doctrines.  It  was  this  conception  that  changed  the  Christ- 
ian ministry  of  the  earlier,  period  into  the  priesthood  of  the 
later  age.  The  City  of  God  took  over  the  ancient  temples 
and  appropriated  the  assets  of  the  older  gods-  The  Chief 
priest  of  the  Christian  church  assumed  the  privileges  and  the 
title  of  the  chief  priest  of  Jupiter.  He  was  pontifex  maximus 
in  the  city  of  Rome.  It  was  by  means  of  this  dogma  that 


268  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Rome  disciplined  Europe  for  a  thousand  years.  It  is  the 
greatest  triumph  of  pure  idealism  known  to  history.  This 
idea  had  no  relation  whatever  to  the  fact  and  yet  the  idea 
was  greater  than  any  fact-  There  was  no  angry  God,  yet  in 
the  name  of  an  angry  god  Rome  ruled  the  world. 

Rome  was  successful  because,  in  her  early  and  formative 
period,  Rome  used  this  angry  God  to  check  the  unruly  wills 
of  men;  he  was  a  bogy  with  which  she  frightened  the  ignor- 
ant. The  world  was  in  a  welter  of  confusion ;  men  could  not 
listen  to  reason  or  give  heed  to  conscience;  it  needed  the 
voice  of  stern  authority  to  curb  their  cruelty  and  to  restrain 
their  lust.  The  belief  in  an  angry  God  is  a  useful  belief  if 
sanely  held-  Fear  is  the  guardian  of  virtue  when  virtue  is 
weak.  The  popes  and  the  priests  did  do  something  in  the 
way  of  protecting  the  weak  from  the  ravages  of  the  strong, 
and  men  from  the  violence  of  their  own  passions. 

But  power  such  as  they  possessed  cannot  be  safely  en- 
trusted to  men.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  this  power 
was  used  for  the  aggrandizement  of  the  priesthood,  for  the 
arrest  of  thought,  and  for  the  clouding-  of  the  conscience 
Under  this  ~systefrf,"~human  life  could  not  be  lived  simply, 
sweetly,  nobly;  it  was  as  if  one  lived  in  a  house  where  some 
one  was  always  angry:  one  dare  not  speak  his  mind  for  fear 
of  giving  offence-  Under  this  teaching,  man  became  self- 
conscious,  he  was  always  saying  to  himself :  "I  have  a  soul  to 
save,  a  God  to  glorify." 

Is  it  not  time  that  we  dismissed  from  our  minds  the 
thought  of  an  angry  God  appeased  by  blood?  Can  we  never 
outgrow  the  terror  of  our  childhood?  Must  we  always  think 
of  our  Father  as  bearing  a  rod? 


BOOK  IX 
THE  MEDIEVAL  GODS 


CHAPTER  LV 

The  Eclipse  of  Christus 

The  two  centuries  following  the  publication  by  Augustine 
of  the  "De  Civitate  Dei"  are  the  most  degraded  and  dis- 
astrous in  the  life  of  the  Western  world.  During  those  cen- 
turies the  old  civilization  died  a  death  of  pain  and  shame.  Be- 
fore Augustine  passed  away,  Africa  was  overrun  by  the 
Vandals,  his  own  city  of  Hippo  was  besieged,  and  the  great 
saint  and  doctor  died  praying  for  a  deliverance  that  never 
came. 

Of  all  the  barbarians  from  the  north  who  swept  down  on 
the  provinces  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  Vandals  were  the 
most  ruthless ;  so  ruthless  were  they  that  their  name  has 
become  a  synonym  for  wanton  destruction.  They  came  like 
locusts  on  the  gardens  and  orchards  of  Gaul,  Hispania,  and 
Africa,  and  left  not  a  green  thing  behind.  Villages  were  laid 
waste,  cities  were  obliterated  from  the  map,  populations  were 
reduced  to  slavery,  and  Western  Europe,  after  the  Vandal 
invasion,  reverted  to  a  barbarism,  from  which  it  has  not  yet 
emerged.  The  Vandals  were  of  kin  to  the  Franks  and  the 
Germans,  who  are  even  to-day  making  Europe  a  place  of 
slaughter. 

In  the  year  475  Odoacer  the  Goth  deprived  Romulus 
Augustulus  of  the  imperium,  and  the  Roman  Empire  ceased 
to  exist.  Rome,  instead  of  being  the  mistress  of  the  world, 
was  now  in  the  possession  of  a  Gothic  chieftain,  and  Italy 
fell  into  that  condition  of  discord  and  disunion  from  which 
it  did  not  recover  until  the  days  of  Victor  Emmanuel  and 
Cavour- 

The  City  of  God  survived  the  disaster  of  the  City  of  the 
Caesars  and,  out  of  the  ruins  of  that  city,  built  for  itself  a 

271 


272  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

new,  a  wider,  and  a  greater  dominionX/The  bishop  of  the  city 
of  Rome  centered  in  himself  all  the  hopes  and  fears,  all  the 
religious  devotion  and  enthusiasm,  that  had  been  generated 
In  the  hearts  of  the  people  by  the  worship  of  and  the  love 
for  the  God  Christus,  organizing  these  hopes  and  fears,  this 
devotion  and  enthusiasm,  into  a  political  machine  for  the 
control  and  discipline  of  Europe./  From  the  day  that  Rome 
ceased  to  be  imperial,  it  began  to  be  papal,/ 

But  before  the  Pope  could  come  to  his  own,  Western 
Europe  had  to  pass  through  centuries  of  darkness  and  dis- 
order in  which  humanity  was  forgotten  and  man  became  once 
more  a  beast  of  prey,  finding  his  chief  satisfaction  in  fighting 
and  drunkenness. 

But  if  the  condition  of  the  Western  Empire  was  deplorable, 
the  condition  of  Eastern  Europe  was  despicable.  The  West 
reverted  to  a  barbarism  in  which  there  was  a  promise  of  life, 
the  East  sank  down  into  an  effete,  corrupt,  and  loathsome 
civilization  which  could  only  end  in  further  degradation,  de- 
cay, and  death. 

The  emperors  of  the  East  anticipated  the  career  of  the 
Sultans:  they  were  emperors  of  the  palace,  they  were  the 
slaves  of  women,  they  were  exalted  and  cast  down  by  the 
intrigues  of  the  eunuchs.  The  Christian  religion  in  the  East 
had  none  of  the  effectiveness  of  the  church  in  the  West.  The 
Patriarch  of  Constantinople  could  not  compete  with  the 
Patriarch  of  Rome.  In  the  West,  by  the  disasters  of  the 
empire,  the  church  was  left  free  to  work  out  its  own  career; 
in  the  East  the  church  was  under  the  shadow  of  the  palace; 
religion  was  a  function  of  the  State.  The  bishop  of  Con- 
stantinople was  and  must  be  the  obsequious  servant  of  his 
master,  the  emperor.  If  he  dared  to  lift  up  his  voice  against 
the  iniquities  of  the  palace,  as  did  St.  John  Chrysostom,  the 
empress  banished  him  to  the  savage  regions  of  Mt.  Taurus- 
Christianity  in  the  East  was  not  in  the  keeping  of  states- 
men, it  was  the  prey  of  the  monks;  and  the  monks  of  the 
East  were  as  nasty  as  hornets  and  as  quarrelsome  as  spiders. 
Keeping  up  a  perpetual  wrangle  and  jangle  over  abstruse 
points  of  doctrine,  the  warring  factions  carried  their  quar- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  273 

rels  into  the  Circus,  where  the  opposing  parties  had  their 
chariots  and  their  colors,  and  shouted  hatred  at  one  another 
from  the  benches. 

If  any  institution  was  ripe  for  judgment  that  institution 

was  organized  Christianity  in  the  East  at  the  beginning  of  the 

Seventh  Century, — and  that  judgment  came. 

/'"in  the  year  622  occurred  that  event  pregnant  with  con- 

/  sequences  for  the  future  of  Christianity  and  Europe,  known 

/    as  the  Hegira  of  Mahomet.     It  was  in  that  flight  that  fate 

/      flung  out  into  the  world  a  God  who,  within  a  century,  swept 

/      into   his    control    Western    Asia   and    Northern    Africa,   who 

made  Spain  his  province,  who  confined  the  Roman  Empire  of 

\     the  East  to  the  environs  of  Constantinople,  and  finally,  after 

N^centuries  of  conflict,  made  that  city  the  seat  of  his  sovereignty.^ 

Mahomet,  the  prophet  of  this  mighty  God,  was  an  Arabian 
camel-driver,  who  in  the  course  of  his  travels  between  Arabia 
and  Syria  became  familiar  with  Christianity  and  Judaism; 
and  having  a  genius  for  religion,  he  soon  found,  by  contact 
with  higher  forms  of  faith,  the  crude  idolatries  of  his  desert 
tribes  ridiculous  in  the  light  of  his  intelligence  and  repugnant 
to  the  dictates  of  his  conscience.  He  could  not  kiss  the 
Black-Stone  of  Mecca  without  laughing,  nor  worship  it  with- 
out shame-  But  while  the  soul  of  the  camel-driver  rose  above 
the  gods  of  his  people,  it  could  not  embrace  the  God  of  the 
Christians.  This  keen-eyed  Arabian  saw  at  once  that  God 
could  not  be  any  such  piece  of  complicated  machinery  as 
Christian  theology  had  made  him  out  to  be,  his  simple  mind 
rejected  the  subtleties  of  the  Greek  philosopher — its  sub- 
stance and  its  persons  had  no  meaning  for  him. 

This  man  of  the  desert  found  his  god  in  the  Desert — the  God  ' 
of  the  Bene-Israel.  With  one  sweep  of  his  genius  he  swept 
away  all  accretions  that  had  gathered  in  the  temple  of  that 
God  and  left  him  nothing  but  the  unity,  the  austerity,  and  the 
implacability  of  the  desert.  Mahomet  reduced  religion,  as 
far  as  God  is  concerned,  to  the  lowest  common  denominator; 
his  creed  can  be  expressed  in  nine  English  words :  "There  is 
one  God,  and  Mahomet  is  his  prophet."  Beyond  this,  sim- 
plicity cannot  go. 


274        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Having  formulated  his  faith,  Mahomet  proceeded  to  live  it. 
He  sought  his  Desert  God  in  desert  places ;  he  received  from 
his  God  visions  and  revelations.  He  was  the  camel-driver 
of  Khadijah,  a  wealthy  woman  of  Mecca.  His  mistress  made 
him  her  husband,  and  she  was  his  first  convert-  His  love  for 
his  wife  was  the  stay  of  the  prophet  in  all  the  dark  hours  of 
his  early  career;  when  scorn  was  heaped  upon  him  from 
without,  and  when  doubt  weakened  his  faith  within,  he  re- 
assured himself  by  saying :  "Khadijah  believes  in  me !"  And 
to  this  day  Khadijah  shares  with  Mahomet  the  veneration  of 
the  faithful. 

Having  made  a  few  converts  in  Mecca,  Mahomet  became 
not  only  an  object  of  derision  but  also  of  hatred.  The  chief 
men  of  the  city  sought  to  kill  him.  To  escape  their  wrath, 
Mahomet,  with  his  following,  fled  by  night  to  the  neighboring 
city,  Yathrib ;  known  thereafter  as  Al  Medina, — the  City  of 
the  Prophet-  When  his  enemies  came  out  in  force  against 
him,  he  met  them  on  the  field  of  battle  and  beat  them ;  and 
from  that  hour  the  sword  of  Mahomet  preached  effectively 
the  religion  of  Mahomet.  The  wild  tribes  of  the  Arabian 
deserts  were  swept  into  the  new  movement  as  by  the  magic 
of  their  god.  Fired  by  the  zeal  of  their  new-born  faith,  they 
rushed  out  of  the  desert  with  the  cry  of,  "Allah  il  Allah !" 
(God  is  God)  on  their  lips,  with  veneration  for  the  prophet 
Mahomet  in  their  hearts,  with  the  sword  of  the  Lord  in  their 
hands,  and  made  their  own  the  fairest  portions  of  the  earth. 
The  birthplace  of  Christianity  was  lost  forever  to  Christianity, 
and  is  to  this  day  in  the  keeping  of  the  God  of  Mahomet. 

The  God  of  Mahomet  is  a  god  congenial  to  the  souls  of 
fighting  men,  he  is  the  War-God  of  the  Desert,  who  gives  to 
his  soldiers  the  reward  of  bravery,  who  soothes  their  fiery 
souls  with  the  unlimited  embraces  of  women,  who  gives 
them  the  spoils  of  the  cities,  and  if  they  die  fighting,  they 
pass  at  once  into  the  presence  of  the  black-eyed  Houri,  who 
embrace  them  under  the  shade  ot  the  palm  trees  of  Paradise- 

This  religion  threatened  for  centuries  the  religion  of  the 
Christ.  It  seems  but  an  accident  that  Europe  is  to-day 
Christian  and  not  Mahommedan.  Western  Europe  owes  its 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  275 

deliverance  to  the  valor  of  the  Franks  who,  under  Charles 
Martel,  defeated  the  Mohammedan  invaders  on  the  field  of 
Tours,  and  drove  them  beyond  the  Pyrenees,  thus  saving 
Western  Europe  to  Christianity. 

The  simplicity  of  the  religion  of  Mahomet  left  the  mind 
free  to  employ  its  powers  in  dealing  with  the  facts  of  life. 
The  followers  of  the  Prophet,  during  the  centuries  that  fol- 
lowed, outstripped  the  Christians  in  the  sciences,  the  arts, 
and  the  amenities  of  life.  They  built  their  cities  from  Ispahan 
to  Granada  and  made  them  the  centers  of  learning.  To  them 
we  owe  the  figures  from  1  to  10  which  have  displaced  the 
clumsy  numerals  of  the  Latin  and  made  possible  the  rapid 
calculations  necessary  to  the  complications  of  modern  life. 
It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that,  but  for  the  Arabic  method, 
of  numbering,  our  present  industrial  civilization  could  scarce-~i 
ly  have  come  into  existence. 

It  was  in  his  conflict  with  the  Saracens  that  the  rude  Saxon 
and  the  Frank  were  taught  the  first  rudiments  of  good  man- 
ners,— Saladin  was  the  teacher  of  Coeur  de  Lion.  The  wars 
of  the  Crusaders  did  not  recover  the  Holy  Land,  but  they 
did  bring  the  enlightenment  of  the  East  to  the  West  and  made 
possible  the  passage  of  the  Teutonic  people  from  barbarism 
to  civilization.  We  cannot  afford  to  despise  the  God  of 
Mahomet,  as  it  is  to  him  and  his  people  that  we  owe  so  much 
that  is  useful  in  our  present  civilization, — such  as  it  is. 

The  religion  of  Christus  in  the  East,  as  a  consequence  of 
the  conquest  of  Islam,  became  a  subject  religion, — a  religion 
that  existed  at  the  mercy  of  the  Caliph  and  the  Sultan.  After 
the  conversion  of  Vladimir  the  Russ, — who  for  the  sake  of 
marrying  a  princess  of  Constantinople  embraced  the  Christ- 
ian faith  and  drove  his  people  into  the  rivers  at  the  edge  of 
the  sword  to  be  baptized, — the  Eastern  church  lost  all  power 
of  expansion.  It  has  for  centuries  lived  a  sordid,  dependent 
life  under  the  rule  of  the  Turk,  and  has  lent  itself  as  the 
plausible  instrument  of  the  despotism  of  the  Tsar  of  Russia- 
It  calls  itself  orthodox ;  it  worships  its  creed  ;  it  has  not  since 
the  Seventh  Century  added  to  or  taken  away  from  its  articles 
of  faith,  it  has  had  saints  and  doctors,  but  these  have  been  the 


276        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

saints  and  doctors  of  a  stagnant  religion  that  has  been  the 
breeding-place  of  ignorance  and  tyranny.  Christianity  in  the 
East  has  sadly  failed  to  fulfill  the  promise  of  its  youth. 

In  the  West  it  had  a  more  active  and  honorable  career. 
The  Roman  lawyers  organized  Christianity  into  a  vast  politi- 
cal machine  for  the  government  of  Western  Europe. 

There  is  not  in  all  history  anything  more  marvelous  than 
the  rise  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome  to  the  political  mastership 
of  Western  Europe-  Beginning  as  the  overseer  of  a  little 
band  of  slaves,  thieves,  and  harlots  in  the  Trastevere,  hiding 
from  the  wrath  of  the  emperor  in  the  darkness  of  the  cata- 
combs, he  rose  step  by  step  from  this  lowliness  and  obscurity 
to  be  for  centuries  the  most  considerable  personage  in 
Europe,  until  he  could  compel  an  emperor  to  wait  for  three 
days  barefooted  in  the  snows  (as  did  Henry  of  Germany,  at 
Canossa,  to  get  the  pardon  of  Gregory  VII),  and  until  Charles 
of  Hungary  and  Charles,  King  of  Naples,  led  the  horse  of 
Boniface  VIII  on  the  day  that  he  assumed  the  triple  crown 
yt  the  Pope. 

{  The  exaltation  of  the  Pope  was  due  to  the  fact  that  he 
^succeeded  to  the  spiritual  eminence  of  Jesus  and  to  the 
political  supremacy  of  Caesar.  Before  the  Pope  could  be 
pope  Jesus  had  to  die  on  the  cross  and  Caesar  had  to  triumph 
on  the  field  of  Pharsalus.  It  was  the  Pope's  advantage  that 
he  was  at  the  place  where  these  two  streams  of  personal  in- 
fluence met  and  mingled- 

/•''  Jesus  had  thrown  the  spell  of  his  spiritual  genius  over 
the  Western  world ;  he  had  entered  the  womb  of  the  West 
and  impregnated  it  with  a  new  life;  he  had  revealed  to  man 
the-soul  of  man.  He  had  made  human  life  to  consist  not  in 
the  abundance  of  things  a  man  possessedj  but  in  intregrity 
and  purity  of  soul.  He  had  made  life  the  common  and  equal 
possession  of  all  men,  rich  and  poor,  high  and  low  alike, — only 
the  poor  had  the  advantage  of  the  rich,  in  that  they  were  not, 
burdened  with  the  baggage  of  life.  Jesus  inspired  the  mass 
of  the  people  with  hope  and  gave  enthusiasm  to  humanity. 
These  riches  of  Christ  came  into  the  keeping  of  the  Pope  as 
the  overseer  of  the  Christian  Church  in  Rome- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS        277 

Just  as  Jesus  was  the  greatest  spiritual  genius  of  the  race, 
was  Caesar  the  greatest  political  geniu^  Caesar  was  not 
a  brilliant  conqueror  as  was  Alexander,  nor  was  he  a  vulgar 
conqueror  as  was  Gengis  Khan;  he  was  primarily  a  politi- 
cian.ja_statesman.  an  organizer/'  All  the  wars  of  Caesar  were 
wars  of  policy!  yrae  saw  the  civilized  world  falling  into  ruin 
through  the  powerlessness  of  the  Roman  oligarchy  to  govern 
the  world  it  had  conquered.  He  swept  that  oligarchy  out  of 
his  way  and  reorganized  the  Roman  world,  centering  all 
authority  in  himself  and  making  of  the  republic  of  Rome  an 
empire,  and  thereby  so  casting  the  spell  of  the  name  and 
power  of  Imperial  Rome  over  the  imaginations  of  men  that 
to  this  day  his  name  is  the  synonym  of  political  supremacy. 

When  the  empire  of  Rome  fell,  the  ghost  of  that  empire 
haunted  Europe  for  ten  centuries, — indeed,  it  still  stalks 
abroad  in  the  guise  of  the  Roman  Church.  When  Constantine 
removed  the  seat  of  the  empire  from  Rome  to  Byzantium 
he  did  not  remove  the  empire.  The  empire  was  not  so  much 
an  outward  fact  as  it  was  a  spiritual  conception;  the  people 
could  no  more  conceive  of  a  world  without  an  emperor  than 
they  could  conceive  of  a  heaven  without  a  god. 

It  was  this  that  gave  the  Pope  his  opportunity;  in  the  ab- 
sence of  the  emperor  he  was  the  most  considerable  personage 
in  Rome,  and  not  only  in  Rome  but  in  Italy-  In  the  Christian 
dogmatic  he  had  a  means  of  disciplining  the  people  that  no 
other  possessed.  Almost  in  spite  of  himself,  he  was  com- 
pelled to  reorganize  Europe.  A  double  portion  of  the  spirit 
of  Caesar  seems  to  have  fallen  upon  him.  He  became  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  God  on  earth.  At  his  excommunication 
men's  lives  were  blasted  and  at  his  interdict  whole  nations 
thrown  into  terror  and  despair.  He  separated  the  clergy  from 
the  laity  by  the  rule  of  celibacy  and  made  of  the  clergy  a  force 
to  elevate  the  church  and  depress  the  people.  More  and  more 
the  Pope  centered  the  power  of  the  church  in  himself,  he  was  ' 
both  Christ  and  Caesar, — though  more  Caesar  than  Christ. 

As  the  Pope  became  more  and  more  powerful  Caesar 
eclipsed  Christ  and  the  Pope  was  worshipped  as  Divus  Caesar, 


278  THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

the  God  of  the  Organization.  And  it  is  so  even  to  this  day, — 
in  the  Catholic  Church  the  Pope  is  carried  aloft  to  receive 
the  adoration  of  the  people.  The  jubilee  of  the  bishop  is 
celebrated  with  pomp  and  ceremony-.j^The  Catholic  Church 
has  succeeded  in  substituting  itself  for  God  as  the  object  of 
worship ;  the  Catholic  Church  is  the  clergy,  and  the  clergy  is 
the  Pope7^> 

And  So  it  has  come  to  pass  that  Joshua  ben  Joseph, — 
Jesus  the  Christus  of  God, — is  to-day  in  the  East  hardly  more 
than  an  article  of  the  creed,  and  in  the  West  the  motive  power 
of  a  vast  political  machine.  For  centuries  he  has  been  iu 
eclipse, — creed  and  church  hiding  him  from  the  eyes  of  the 
people.  But  the  day  of  his  emergence  is  at  hand. 


CHAPTER  LVI 

Mary:    The  Goddess  of  Consolation 

When  the  Sun  is  in  eclipse  the  Moon  is  seen  in  the  sky. 
The  philosophers  and  the  lawyers  had  so  obscured  the  light 
and  the  love  of  Jesus  ben  Joseph  that  the  eyes  of  men  could 
not  see  by  that  light  nor  could  men  warm  themselves  in  the 
heat  of  that  love.  Man  can  no  sooner  worship  the  Second 
Person  of  an  Adorable  Trinity  than  he  can  worship  the 
hypotenuse  of  a  triangle.  Mathematicians  may  adore  the 
hypotenuse,  philosophers  may  bow  down  before  the  Second 
Person,  but  the  common  man  stands,  bewildered  and  lost,  in 
the  presence  of  these  divinities, — he  can  make  nothing  of 
them.  These  do  not  satisfy  his  craving  for  worship,  and  he 
turns  from  them  to  gods  more  congenial  to  his  mind  and 
nature. 

The  consequence  of  the  super-exaltation  of  the  Christus 
was  the  influx  of  a  multitude  of  minor  divinities.  Man  had 
been  too  long  used  to  the  gods  of  the  fireside,  of  the  field,  and 
of  the  city  street  to  content  himself  with  an  abstract  god  far 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  279 

away  from  his  home,  his  land  and  his  city.  As  the  average 
man  is  incurably  polygamous,  so  he  is  incurably  polytheistic: 
he  can  no  more  center  his  thoughts  on  one  god  than  he  can 
center  his  desires  on  one  woman.  This  fact  may  be  ignored 
in  the  interest  of  theology  and  morality,  but  it  is  a  fact  with 
which  theology  and  morality  has  had  to  deal  from  the  time 
man  emerged  from  the  horde  until  the  present  day.  When 
Christianity  became  the  religion  of  the  multitude  it  could  no 
longer  protect  the  Absolute  unity  nor  the  stainless  purity 
of  its  god;  it  had  to  give  the  people  gods  after  their  own 
kind,  else  the  people  would  forsake  the  church  and  turn  again 
to  the  gods  of  the  countryside.  In  the  Seventh  and  Eighth 
Centuries  the  church  compromised  with  paganism ;  while 
maintaining  the  Absolute  Tri-unity  of  its  great  gods,  it  ad- 
mitted minor  gods  into  the  sacred  precincts  of  the  church  and 
permitted  them  to  receive  divine  honors- 

The  church  was  forced  to  this  compromise  by  the  pressure 
of  the  people,  who  would  have  gods  of  their  own  making,  in 
spite  of  the  objection  of  the  lawyer  and  the  philosopher.  So 
the  old  gods  came  back  with  a  rush.  They  had  changed  their 
names,  they  had  been  recast  in  the  mold  of  the  new  religion, — 
had  lost  their  beauty  and  their  joyance.  Simon  Stylites  on  a 
pillar  was  a  poor  substitute  for  Mercury  lighting  on  a  heaven- 
kissing  hill ;  but  Simon  and  his  co-gods  were  there,  receiving 
the  adoration  of  the  multitude.  The  martyrs  and  the  con- 
fessors became  the  minor  gods  of  the  church,  and  there  were 
enough  of  them  to  go  around,  so  that  every  man  could  have 
a  god  of  his  own  choosing.  The  iconic  age  returned,  and 
images  of  the  saints  stood  in  the  niches  of  the  Christian 
churches  just  as  the  statues  of  the  gods  had  been  wont  to 
stand  in  the  niches  of  the  heathen  temples.  All  this  was  in 
accord  with  the  principle  that  revolutions  always  return  upon 
themselves.  Progress  is  a  process  of  chain-making;  revolu- 
tions, returning  on  themselves,  make  link  within  link,  and  so 
the  chain  lengthens. 

These  minor  gods  of  the  Christian  church  were  endowed 
with  all  the  attributes  of  divinity  necessary  to  make  them 
useful  and  sufficient  gods  in  the  daily  life  of  the  people.  They 


280  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

could  heal  the  sick,  they  could  give  sight  to  the  blind  and 
hearing  to  the  deaf,  they  could  pardon  sin  and  secure  to  their 
patrons  the  blessings  of  eternal  life.  Because  of  the  power 
of  these  divinities,  the  medieval  Christian  lived  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  what  we  call  the  supernatural.  The  supernatural 
was  his  world.  He  knew  no  nature  with  its  impersonal  laws, 
acting  inevitably  and  without  regard  to  the  whim  or  wish  of 
man.  The  world  to  him  was  in  the  keeping  of  the  saints  who 
could  withhold  or  send  the  rain,  who  could  visit  with  the 
plague  or  take  the  plague  away.  Miracle  to  him  was  not  the 
unusual ;  it  was  the  usual-  The  miracles  recorded  in  the  lives 
of  the  saints  make  the  miracles  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ment look  like  second  best.  Saint  Maur  could  walk  on  the 
water  with  more  ease  than  Jesus;  the  bones  of  St.  Thomas 
could  quicken  the  dead  to  a  resurrection  other  than  his  own, 
and  St.  Anthony  of  Padua  could  spy  out  the  hiding-place  of 
lost  valuables  with  more  than  the  omniscience  of  Christus, 

I  The  history  of  the  medieval  man  proves  conclusively  that 
man  does  not  live  in  the  actual  world  but  in  a  world  of  his 
own  making-  We  each  inhabit  a  world  that  has  been  created 
for  us  by  our  own  thought. 

The  medieval  period  has  been  called  the  age  of  faith;  it 
should  be  called  the  age  of  credulity.  True  faith  can  only  be 
based  on  knowledge.  The  Middle  Age  was  an  age  of  ignor- 
ance. The  men  had  no  knowledge  upon  which  they  could 
base  a  sane  belief;  they  had  no  faith, — they  could  have  no 
faith,— in  the  order  of  nature,  because  they  were  ignorant  of 
nature ;  for  them  there  was  no  nature  with  its  play  and  inter- 
play of  forces.  They  had  no  such  sense  as  we  have  in  the 
security  of  the  operations  of  nature.  They  were  the  victims 
of  capricious  beings,  whose  actions  were  as  uncertain  as  a 
child's:  saints  helped  them,  devils  hindered  them.  In  the 
day  they  might  meet  a  saint  and  receive  his  blessing,  in  the 
night  ghosts  haunted  the  darkness  and  goblins  sat  upon  the 
foot  of  their  beds.  The  saints  themselves  might  at  any  mo- 
ment turn  sour  and  slap  a  man  in  the  face. 

The  medieval  age  was  an  age  of  cold  and  darkness  and 
fear.     Murder  and  rapine  were  the  order  of  the  day.       The 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  281 

Vandal  and  the  Hun  rode  shrieking  through  Europe,  pillag- 
ing, burning,  killing,  and  the  Vandal  and  the  Hun  were  fol- 
lowed by  the  Saxon  and  the  Dane.  Cities  and  lonely  castles, 
— with  their  forbidding  walls,  with  their  moat  and  portcullis, 
— were  the  gathering-places  of  frightened  men  and  women 
and  children.  It  is  lovely  to  read  about  the  Middle  Age,  but, 
I  trow,  it  would  have  been  uncomfortable  to  live  in  it.  The 
Ninth  Century  was  the  midnight  of  the  darkness  and  confu- 
sion of  Europe  which  followed  upon  the  overthrow  of  the 
Roman  Empire  by  the  barbaric  invasion.  It  was  at  that 
time  that  men  fled  for  protection  and  consolation  to  the 
Bosom  of  the  Mother  of  God- 

The  exaltation  of  Mary  to  the  rank  of  the  greater  divinities 
was  the  demand  of  a  time  when  no  male  god  could  comfort 
the  soul  of  the  people.  The  Middle  Age  was  an  age  of  child- 
hood, it  needed  a  mother's  love  more  than  it  needed  a  father's 
care.  The  childishness  of  the  age  is  seen  in  its  nervousness, 
in  its  capriciousness,  in  its  emotional  instability.  Like  chil- 
dren, it  was  afraid  of  the  dark  and  easily  moved  to  tears.  The 
men  fought  and  drank  like  children,  without  regard  to  con- 
sequences, and  when  their  righting  and  their  drinking  brought 
them  headaches  and  bloody  noses,  they  ran  to  Mother  Mary 
for  comfort;  just  as  children  run  to  mother  when  they  have 
a  bruise  or  an  ache.  The  Middle  Age  was  a  childish  age, 
and  therefore  it  was  a  woman's  age, — for  women  are  the 
natural  protectors  of  children.  The  priests  who  ruled  Europe 
in  the  Middle  Age  were  as  much  women  as  men,  they  were 
asexual,  they  were  beardless,  they  wore  petticoats.  In  deal- 
ing with  the  rude  baron  they  practiced  the  guile  of  the  woman ; 
they  did  not  exercise  the  strength  of  the  man. 

The  childishness  of  the  age  is  seen  in  the  extravagance, 
the  violence,  and  the  instability  of  its  emotions-  The  Crusad- 
ers march  through  Syria  and  leave  behind  them  cities  in 
ashes,  fields  wasted,  murdered  men,  and  ravished  women ;  but 
when  they  come  to  the  Mount  of  Olives,  and  see  Jerusalem, 
they  burst  into  tears.  The  flagellants  go  naked  to  the  waist 
through  the  streets  of  the  city  and  flog  themselves  until  the 
blood  runs,  and  then  laugh  like  maniacs  at  their  own  folly. 


282        THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

The  architecture  of  the  Middle  Age  is  childish.  We  say  of 
the  Gothic  Cathedral :  "It  is  a  dream !"  and  so  it  is, — the 
dream  of  a  child.  It  is  the  outcome  of  aspiration  without  ex- 
perience. The  character  of  Gothic  architecture  in  comparison 
with  the  classic  is  set  forth  so  truly  and  so  quaintly  by 
Brother  Copas  in  the  story  of  Quiller-Couch  that  I  will  let 
Brother  Copas  be  my  spokesman. 

It  is  upon  the  question  of  restoring  the  cathedral  that 
Brother  Copas  speaks  his  mind;  addressing  the  bishop  he 
says: 

"My  Lord,  when  a  Hellene  built  a  temple  to  his  god  he  took 
two  pillars,  set  them  upright  in  the  ground  and  laid  a  third 
block  of  stone  a-top  of  them.  He  might  repeat  this  operation 
a  few  times  or  a-many,  according  to  the  size  at  which  he 
wished  to  build.  He  might  carve  his  pillars  and  flourish  them 
off  with  acanthus  capitals  and  run  friezes  along  his  archi- 
traves, but  always  in  these  three  stones,  the  two  upright  and 
the  beam,  the  trick  of  it  resided,  and  his  building  lasted.  The 
pillars  stood  firm  in  solid  ground  into  which  the  weight  of  the 
crossbeam  pressed  them  yet  more  firmly.  The  whole  struc- 
ture was  there  to  endure,  if  not  forever,  at  least  until  some 
ass  of  a  fellow  came  along  and  kicked  it  down  to  spite  the 
old  religion;  because  he  had  found  a  new  one.  But  this 
Gothic — this  cathedral — which  it  seems  we  must  help  to  pre- 
serve, is  fashioned  only  to  kick  itself  down." 

"It  aspires"   [said  the  bishop]. 

"Precisely,  My  Lord,  that  is  the  mischief ;  when  the  Greek 
temple  was  content  to  repose  upon  natural  law,  when  the 
Greek  builder  said :  'I  will  build  for  my  gods  greatly  yet 
lowly,  measuring  my  efforts  to  the  powers  of  man,  which  at 
their  fullest  I  know  to  be  moderate,  making  my  work  harmon- 
ious with  what  little  it  is  permitted  me  to  know' — in  jumps 
the  rash  Christian  saying,  with  the  men  of  Babel :  'Go  to, 
let  us  build  us  a  city  and  a  tower  whose  top  may  reach  unto 
heaven,'  or  in  other  words,  let  us  soar  above  the  laws  of  earth 
and  take  the  kingdom  of  heaven  by  storm.  With  what  re- 
sult? 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  283 

Sed  quid  Typhceus  et  Vilidus  Mimas 
Contra  sonantem  Palladis  agida? 

The  Gothic  builders,  like  the  Titans,  might  strain  to  pile 
Pelion  on  Olympus — vis  consilii  expers,  my  Lord,  from  the 
moment  they  take  down  their  scaffolding;  nay,  while  it  is 
yet  standing,  the  dissolution  begins.  All  their  complicated 
structure  of  weights,  counter-weights,  thrusts  and  balances, 
has  started  an  internecine  conflict,  stone  wearing  against 
stone,  the  whole  disintegrating." ' 

So  much  for  Brother  Copas.  When  I  stood  in  that  wilder- 
ness of  stone,  the  nave  of  Yorkminster,  I  did  not  wonder  that 
Cromwell  used  it  to  stable  his  horses;  when  I  stood  on  the 
roof  of  the  Milan  cathedral,  with  its  forest  of  pinnacles,  I 
said :  "Here  is  childish  conceit  gone  mad-" 

The  intellectual  life  of  the  Middle  Age  was  as  childish  as 
was  its  artistic.  The  writings  of  the  schoolmen  are  a  marvel 
of  futility.  Children  always  talk  confidentially  of  that  of 
which  they  know  nothing.  Fact  is  to  them  non-existent, 
they  live  in  a  world  of  fancy ;  their  world  is  a  world  of  lions 
and  bears  and  giants  and  Indians  and  cowboys.  The  medieval 
man  knew  nothing  of  the  earth  upon  which  he  lived,  his 
knowledge  of  its  geography  was  grotesque  to  laughter;  but 
this  did  not  faze  him.  Knowing  nothing  of  the  earth,  he 
proceeded  to  map  out  the  topography  of  heaven  and  hell  with 
the  minuteness  of  a  specialist;  having  not  the  slightest  ac- 
quaintance with  the  workings  of  his  own  mind,  he  read  the 
mind  of  God  like  a  book.  He  played  at  thinking  as  children 
play  at  telling  endless  stories,  without  point  or  purpose. 

The  intellectual  product  of  the  Middle  Age  lies  in  our  libra- 
ries as  dead  as  is  the  mummy  of  Rameses  in  the  British 
Museum.  The  mind  of  the  Middle  Age  thinker  was  as  active 
as  a  squirrel  in  a  cage;  like  the  squirrel,  it  simply  ran  and  ran 
without  getting  anywhere-  Scholasticism  is  a  byword  for  in- 
tellectual futility. 

i 

'"Brother  Copas,"   A.  T.   Quiller-Couch,  Scribner  &  Son,   1911. 


284        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Childish  in  its  knowledge,  the  Middle  Age  was  in  great  fear 
where  no  fear  was.  Its  awful  bogy  was  the  second  coming 
of  Christ.  It  expressed  this  fear  in  the  exquisite  poetry  of 
the  "Dies  Irae."  The  souls  of  the  people  were  kept  in  con- 
stant alarm,  the  thought  of  Christ  was  fearful ;  he  was  the 
judge,  stern  and  awful.  The  frightened  children  fled  from 
him  to  find  protection  in  the  merciful  arms  of  his  Mother. 

This  view  of  Christ  and  Mary  in  relation  to  the  last  judg- 
ment is  set  forth  in  Michaelangelo's  cartoon  of  that  event 
on  the  east  wall  of  the  Sistine  Chapel ;  God  the  Father  sits  in 
the  upper  cirro, — serene,  self-satisfied ;  in  the  lower  sky  Jesus 
is  to  his  right  and  Mary  to  his  left,  the  dead  are  rising  from 
their  graves,  Christ,  with  angry  brow  and  uplifted  hand,  is 
beating  them  down  to  hell ;  Mary,  with  arms  stretching  down- 
ward, is  lifting  them  up  to  heaven.  This  is  the  sum  of  the 
Middle  Age  religion ;  a  religion  of  fear  soothed  by  a  woman. 

Puvis  de  Chavannes  has  caught  the  spirit  of  the  age  in 
his  wonderful  cartoon  on  the  walls  of  the  Pantheon  in  Paris, 
showing  St.  Genevieve  watching  over  the  city.  Paris  is  the 
prey  of  fear,  men  and  women  crouch  in  her  wattle  huts  under 
the  shadow  of  her  cathedral,  in  terror  of  the  death  that  lurks 
in  the  darkness ;  the  Northmen  are  abroad  at  night  and  the 
wolves  are  howling  over  the  dead  that  they  leave  behind. 
There  is  no  hope  save  in  the  saints,  so  St.  Genevieve  stands 
in  the  battlements  of  Notre  Dame,  watching  over  sleep- 
ing Paris  that  owes  its  safety,  not  to  the  valor  of  its  men, 
but  to  the  piety  and  the  prayers  of  its  women. 

It  was  in  this  age  that  Mary,  Mother  of  God,  Mother  of 
Sorrows,  Goddess  of  Consolation,  attained  to  the  rank  of  the 
Greater  Divinities-  She  became  in  reality  the  incarnation  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  of  Comfort,  the  Third  Person  in  the  Adorable 
Trinity. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  285 

CHAPTER  LVII 
The  Exploitation  of  the  Gods 

Some  three-and-thirty  years  ago  it  was  my  privilege  to 
cross  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  make  my  first  visit  to  England. 
I  was  then  in  the  freshness  of  my  young  manhood  and  in  the 
full  flush  of  romanticism.  I  was  the  worshipper  of  Scott  and 
the  disciple  of  Newman.  While  I  was  yet  a  lad  Scott 
charmed  me  away  from  the  prosaic  surroundings  of  my  West- 
ern home  and  made  me  walk  with  him  in  countries  strange 
and  far  away.  I  sat  up  all  night  reading  his  romances,  and 
steeped  my  soul  in  the  spirit  of  that  pseudo-Middle  Age 
which  he  created  by  the  witchery  of  his  genius  for  the  delight 
and  the  deceiving  of  generations  of  confiding  youth.  For 
nearly  twenty  years  he  compelled  me  to  live  in  his  Middle 
Age,  to  take  his  Bois  Guilbert  and  his  Rowena,  his  knights 
and  priests,  his  castles  and  his  monasteries,  for  real  knights 
and  priests,  for  real  castles  and  monasteries.  Great  is  the 
power  of  genius,  that  can  take  the  dust  of  ages  and  reform 
it  and  make  it  seem  as  if  it  were  alive ! 

Under  the  influence  of  Scott  and  Mrs-  Porter,  I  spent  all 
my  thinking,  dreaming  hours  in  the  company  of  men  in  armor 
and  of  women  in  white  samite.  As  I  walked  alone,  I  de- 
claimed at  the  top  of  my  voice:  "Scots  wha'ha'wi' Wallace 
bled!"  I  was  a  youth  in  the  Middle  Age. 

It  was,  then,  as  a  medievalist,  the  child  of  Scott,  the  dis- 
ciple of  Newman,  that  I  crossed  the  waters.  I  had  a  mind  to 
make  a  tour  of  the  cathedral  cities  of  England. 

I  went  by  the  way  of  Greenough.  Landing  early  in  the 
afternoon,  I  took  a  train  for  Glasgow,  and  from  thence  went 
immediately  to  Edinburgh.  When  I  reached  the  city  of 
Scott  it  was  evening,  and  the  sun  was  going  down.  I  came 
out  from  the  railway  station  into  Princess  street  and  I  feel  still, 
in  my  old  age,  the  thrill  of  joy  that  swept  over  me  as  I  looked 
across  the  Ravine  and  saw  the  Castle,  its  flags  flying,  and 
heard  the  pibroch.  I  was  at  home  at  last, — in  the  land  of 


286  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

my  dreams !  This  was  my  beloved  Middle  Age  right  before 
my  eyes.  While  I  looked  the  sun  went  down,  and  after  din- 
ner,— taken,  not  in  the  Middle-Age  Inn  but,  to  my  disgust, 
in  a  modern  hotel, — I  went  out  and  walked  up  and  down 
Princess  Street  during  the  long  twilight  of  an  August  night 
until  the  darkness  came,  pacing  to  and  fro,  my  eyes  on  the 
Castle,  as  if  I  were  a  sentinel  on  guard. 

A  visit  to  the  Castle  rather  chilled  my  ardor:  the  soldiers 
were  not  heroic  figures.  As  I  went  about  the  Old  Town  I 
saw  such  poverty,  such  drunkenness,  such  misery  that  my 
worship  for  the  past  was  lost  in  pity  and  horror  for  the 
present. 

One  who  has  not  seen  the  old  town  of  Edinburgh  on  a 
Saturday  night  as  it  was  thirty  years  ago  has  not  seen  an 
exhibition  of  drunkenness,  squalidness,  and  misery  that  made 
the  city  of  Scott  an  unromantic  chamber  of  horrors. 

Leaving  Edinburgh,  I  reached  Durham  in  the  night  and 
went  early  in  the  morning  to  visit  the  cathedral.  From  the 
very  first  I  suffered  a  shock  of  disappointment  I  said :  "Is 
this  a  cathedral?"  Somehow,  it  did  not  answer  to  the  vision 
of  my  soul.  The  first  impression  was  that  of  bigness,  the 
second  of  uselessness. 

I  went  into  it,  and  the  Verger  showed  me  around,  for 
which  service  I  paid  him  a  shilling. 

Durham  is  not  one  of  the  larger  cathedrals,  but  its  inter- 
ior would  hold  all  the  people  of  Durham  and  to  spare.  It 
stood  there  on  the  hill,  looking  over  the  city,  a  monument 
to  the  Middle  Age-  Its  keynote,  as  I  studied  it,  was  exag- 
geration ;  I  began  to  think  of  it  not  so  much  as  a  work  of  art 
as  an  economic  waste.  Were  the  people  of  the  Middle  Age 
so  well  housed  that  they  could  afford  to  build  so  expensively 
for  their  God?  And  then  I  remembered  that  in  the  Middle 
Age  the  people  lived  in  wattle  huts,  without  windows,  with- 
out comforts,— cold,  hungry,  and  afraid.  I  learned  that  the 
building  of  this  cathedral  exhausted  the  labor  of  the  neigh- 
borhood for  nearly  two  centuries.  Each  bishop  vied  to  outdo 
his  predecessor  in  the  extravagance  of  his  building. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  287 

Near  the  cathedral  was  the  castle  of  the  Baron  and  the 
palace  of  the  Bishop,  and  I  began  to  bethink  me  of  what 
the  Middle  Age  was  in  reality;  it  was  not  a  page  in  "Ivanhoe," 
it  was  not  a  glamour  of  silver  armor  and  silken  sheen,  it  was 
not  royal  knight  and  lady,  it  was  an  age  of  darkness,  dirt, 
and  disorder, — an  age  in  which  the  gods  and  the  people  were 
exploited  to  enrich  the  barons  and  the  bishops. 

When  I  visited  Yorkminster  this  impression  was  intensi- 
fied. If  ever  there  was  madness  in  stone,  it  is  Yorkminster. 
Here  is  vastness  to  no  purpose,  human  effort  wasted, — build- 
ing a  house  for  God  so  big  that  any  reasonable  god  would 
be  lost  in  it! 

Accidentally  I  was  locked  up  in  the  chapter  room  of  the 
Minster  for  two  hours  while  the  verger  was  taking  tea;  I 
spent  the  time  studying  the  faces  on  the  heads  in  which  the 
ribs  of  the  roof  terminated.  Such  grotesqueries, — ringers 
in  the  mouth,  face  drawn  awry,  mouth  wide  open,  chin  and 
nose  meeting, — it  was  as  if  the  monks  who  carved  these 
heads  were  laughing  at  their  own  folly,  taking  revenge  upon 
themselves  for  their  lack  of  reason. 

As  I  visited  cathedral  town  after  cathedral  town  I  saw 
these  three  buildings:  the  cathedral,  the  castle  (old  or  new), 
and  the  palace, — always  the  palace.  I  saw  the  cathedral 
close,  with  deaneries  and  canonries  snug  and  comfortable,  and 
I  said  to  myself:  "The  gods  were  profitable  to  the  clergy  in 
the  good  old  days ;  if  I  could  choose  my  lot  I'd  be,  me  lud, 
bishop  in  the  days  when  the  bishops  exploited  the  gods  for 
all  the  gods  were  worth." 

In  that  visit  to  England  my  romanticism  received  a  shock 
from  which  it  never  recovered. 

Four  years  later  I  visited  the  Continent  and  in  every  city 
I  found  the  Middle  Age  represented  by  the  cathedral,  the 
castle,  and  the  palace,  until  at  last  I  came  to  Rome  and  stood 
in  the  Piazza.  San  Pietro,  where  I  saw  that  great  age  come 
to  its  culmination  in  St.  Peter's  and  the  Vatican.  St  Peter's 
is  so  vast  that  it  looks  small ;  the  eye  fails  to  take  it  in,  it  is 
just  like  all-out-of-doors.  The  palace  of  the  Vatican,  the 
home  of  the  Pope,  with  its  eleven  thousand  rooms,  is  a  city 


288  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

all  by  itself-  It  was  in  the  building  of  these  two  monstrous 
houses  that  the  exploitation  of  the  gods  by  the  priesthood 
was  carried  to  an  extreme  that  brought  ruin  to  the  power 
of  the  clergy  to  oppress  the  people.  It  was  the  sale  of  in- 
dulgences to  get  money  to  finish  St.  Peter's  that  set  Luther 
trumpeting  against  the  whole  system  until,  at  his  trumpeting, 
the  medieval  papacy,  like  the  walls  of  Jericho  at  the  trumpet- 
ing of  the  priests  of  Joshua,  came  down  with  a  crash. 

The  exploitation  of  the  gods  in  the  interest  of  the  priest- 
hood has  always  been  the  crime  of  the  clergy.  Everywhere 
and  in  every  time  since  man  began  to  grope  his  way  upward 
from  primeval  slime,  the  medicine  man,  the  fakir,  the  priest, 
the  clergy-man  has  made  his  gain  out  of  the  fears  and  the 
hopes,  the  joys  and  the  sorrows  of  the  people.  Everywhere 
the  gods  have  been  exploited  in  the  building  of  temples,  the 
setting  up  of  altars,  the  celebrating  of  ceremonies,  the  estab- 
lishing of  priesthoods.  At  first  all  this  is  done  unconsciously, 
that  the  gods  may  be  kept  in  humor  and  the  people  suffer  no 
harm.  It  is  during  this  unconscious  period  that  religion  is 
vital,  powerful,  and  ennobling, — expressive  of  the  life  of  the 
people- 

But  in  due  time  this  exploitation  becomes  conscious;  the 
priests  get  wise  to  the  fact  that  it  is  they  and  not  the  gods 
who  are  the  "real  beneficiaries  of  this  system  of  worship.  The 
gods  do  not  eat  of  the  meat  of  the  sacrifice,  but  it  comes 
handy  to  the  pot  of  the  priest.  The  gods  are  not  moved 
by  the  flatteries  of  worship  but  the  saying  of  prayers  is  an 
elegant  and  a  profitable  occupation  for  the  clergy.  The 
clergy  entrenched  in  power  by  law  and  custom,  saw  their 
advantage  and  improved  it.  For  centuries  Europe  suffered 
the  exactions  of  the  clergy,  at  first  patiently  and  then  re- 
belliously-  The  literature  of  the  Thirteenth  and  Fourteenth 
Centuries  reeks  with  denunciation  of  the  corruption  of  the 
church.  Every  device  was  made  use  of  to  draw  money  to 
the  coffers  of  the  clergy. 

The  Fourteenth  Century  opened  with  a  saturnalia  of  ex- 
ploitation. Pope  Boniface  VIII,  in  the  last  year  of  the  old 
century,  proclaimed  a  jubilee  for  the  first  year  of  the  new. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  289 

Any  one  visiting  Rome  and  the  altars  of  the  Apostles  in  that 
year  would  receive,  at  the  Pope's  hands,  full  indulgence  and 
pardon  for  all  his  sins.  To  secure  so  great  a  blessing  mul- 
titudes came  from  all  parts  of  Europe  to  the  Holy  City;  as 
many  as  two  hundred  thousand  pilgrims  were  in  Rome  at  a 
given  time,  crowding  the  churches,  and  attendants,  armed  with 
rakes,  gathered  in  the  copper,  silver,  and  gold  coin  that  fell 
like  hail  at  the  base  of  the  altars.  The  jubilee  became  an 
institution;  first  occurring  every  hundred  years,  then  every 
fifty,  then  whenever  a  Pope  was  in  need  of  money.  It  was 
an  easy  and  delightful  way  of  getting  rid  of  one's  sins,  and 
the  people  came  to  avail  themselves  of  the  privilege.  They 
could  have  a  good  time  coming  and  a  good  time  going  and 
save  their  souls  by  the  way. 

The  last  and  most  elegant  of  the  beneficiaries  of  this 
system  of  conscious  exploitation  was  none  other  than  Giovan- 
ni de  Medici,  known  to  history  as  Leo  X-  Giovanni  de  Medici 
was  the  second  son  of  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent.  The  interest 
of  his  father  made  him  a  cardinal  at  nineteen.  The  letters 
of  Lorenzo  in  relation  to  the  elevation  of  his  son  are  curious 
revelations  of  the  state  of  politics  and  morality  in  Italy  in 
the  Fifteenth  Century.  Talk  about  graft !  Why,  our  grafters 
are  sucking  children  beside  these  men  of  the  Italian  Renais- 
sance. Our  grafters  exploit  the  people;  these  men  exploited 
the  gods, — making  a  conscious  gain  of  godliness- 
Lorenzo,  having  secured  the  promotion  of  his  son,  pro- 
ceeded, out  of  the  treasury  of  Florence, — of  which  city  he 
was  the  boss, — to  furnish  him  with  horses  richly  caparisoned, 
with  sumpter  mules,  laden  with  presents  for  the  Pope  and  his 
cardinals,  and  surrounded  him  with  cavalcades  of  the  noblest 
youth  of  the  City  on  the  Arno.  And  so  Giovanni, — a  boy 
of  nineteen ! — went  to  Rome  and  took  up  his  residence  in  a 
palace  as  a  prince  of  the  church. 

Giovanni  played  his  cards  with  all  the  astuteness  of  a 
Medici.  Holy  orders  sat  lightly  upon  him ;  he  never  went 
beyond  the  order  of  deacons,  nor  did  he  entangle  himself 
with  the  sanctities  of  the  priesthood.  He  was  an  elegant 
man,  prudent  withal  and  a  favorite  with  the  ladies-  The 


290        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

reigning  Pope  grew  jealous  of  him,  and  he  withdrew  from  the 
city.  But  Giovanni  bided  his  time,  and  while  yet  in  the 
thirties,  on  the  death  of  Julius  II,  he  himself,  as  cardinal 
deacon,  acting  as  scrutinor  of  the  ballot,  proclaimed  his  own 
election.  When  asked  what  name  he  would  assume  he  an- 
swered, turning  his  turquoise  ring  the  while: 

"In  my  idle  hours,  when  I  have  indulged  the  absurd  dream 
that  I  might  be  chosen  successor  of  Blessed  Peter,  I  have 
said  that  if  so  strange  and  unmerited  an  honor  should  befall 
me  I  would  take  the  name  of  Leo  X1  in  honor  of  Leo  IX  of 
sacred  memory." 

And  so,  Giovanni  de  Medici  was  proclaimed  Pope  Leo  X 
from  the  window  of  the  Vatican,  to  the  waiting  people  of 
Rome. 

Leo  X  has  given  his  name  to  an  age  of  the  world.  Men 
speak  of  the  Age  of  Pericles  as  the  age  in  which  Greek  genius 
fruited ;  they  speak  of  the  Age  of  Augustus  as  the  age  in 
which  Horace  and  Vergil  sang  their  songs ;  and  the  Latin 
genius  had  its  brief  day  of  glory;  and  so  they  speak  of  the 
Age  of  Leo  X  as  the  age  in  which  the  splendor  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance  culminated.  Leo  X  was  the  liberal  patron  of  arts 
and  letters,  he  was  the  center  of  a  magnificent  court.  Cour- 
tesans, elegant  and  refined,  soothed  his  idle  hours ;  he  was  a 
pagan  of  the  pagans,  when  he  came  from  Mass  he  would  smile 
and  say:  "This  Christianity  is  a  convenient  superstition!" 
In  his  hands  the  exploitation  of  the  gods  was  a  conscious, 
necessary  method  of  supplying  the  ever-hungry  maw  of  the 
papal  treasury  with  silver  and  gold.  Ecclesiastical  offices 
were  sold  to  the  highest  bidder;  indulgences,  giving  pardon 
for  sins,  were  common  commodities  in  the  market.  Hawkers 
of  these  papal  parchments  were  in  every  city  and  village  and 
at  every  cross-road,  crying  their  wares.  No  one  with  money 
in  his  pocket  need  go  unshrived  of  his  sin. 

The  papal  curia  sold  the  archbishopric  of  Mayence  to 
Prince  Albert  of  Brandenburg  for  fifty  thousand  gulden,  and 
then  gave  the  archbishop  the  right  to  sell  indulgences  through 
Northern  Germany  to  recoup  himself. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  291 

But  this  was  going  too  far!  The  outraged  gods  awoke  to 
their  shame.  When  Tetzel,  the  agent  of  the  archbishop, 
came  into  the  Electorate  of  Saxony  peddling  his  wares,  and 
was  drawing  toward  Wittenberg,  the  storm  that  had  been 
brewing,  broke,  with  violence.  One  Brother  Martin,  son  of 
a  miner  of  Eisleben, — monk  and  professor, — nailed  to  the 
door  of  his  church  his  thesis  asserting  that  he  would  main- 
tain before  all-comers  the  proposition  that  all  this  indulgence 
business  was  unscriptural,  unholy,  a  profanation  of  God,  and 
a  robbery  of  man-  And  all  the  people  were  aflame  at  the 
words  of  Brother  Martin,  and  the  flame  spread,  until  all 
Germany  was  in  conflagration. 

At  first  the  elegant  Leo,  toying  with  his  courtesans,  laugh- 
ed at  the  uncouth  monk,  who  called  his  infallibility  into  ques- 
tion. But  his  laugh  did  not  put  out  the  fire.  Then  he 
threatened.  But  his  threats  only  fanned  the  flames;  and 
before  Leo  died,  the  right  of  the  Pope  and  his  priests  to  ex- 
ploit the  gods  to  the  shame  of  the  gods  and  the  loss  of  the 
people  was  burned  to  ashes  in  Northern  Germany  and  with 
it  was  consumed  the  right  of  the  Pope  to  rule  over  the  intel- 
ligence and  the  conscience  of  man. 

The  unity  of  the  church  was  rent  asunder,  and  Catholicism 
became  a  sect. 


CHAPTER  LVIII 
Joseph  Comes  to   His  Own 

The  religious  upheaval  of  the  Fifteenth  and  Sixteenth 
centuries  not  only  created  the  national  churches  and  religious 
denominations  of  Protestantism,  but  it  also  profoundly  trans- 
formed the  Catholic  Church  itself.  The  Catholic  Church  of 
the  post-Reformation  period  is  so  unlike  the  Church  of  the 
Middle  Age,  or  the  Church  of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  that  it 


292  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

seems  not  the  same  but  a  different  institution.  It  is  true  that 
the  church  did  not  abate  its  claims,  but  it  did  abate,  in  some 
degree,  its  insolence  in  the  assertion  of  its  claims.  In  the 
Council  of  Trent  it  did  reaffirm  all  its  traditions;  it  still 
clothed  the  Pope  with  the  powers  of  a  Vice-God,  but  the 
Pope  did  not  (because  he  could  not)  exercise  those  powers 
with  his  old-time  rigor.  A  great  section  of  Europe  had 
escaped  from  under  his  hand;  he  could  not  punish,  he  could 
only  scold  it.  The  men  of  the  North  smiled  at  his  ex- 
communication and  laughed  at  his  interdict,  and  even  the 
men  of  the  South,  who  remained  steadfast  in  the  old  order, 
would  not  endure  such  exercise  of  papal  tyranny.  So  the 
excommunication  was  reserved  for  the  recalcitrant  priests, 
and  the  interdict  fell  into  innocuous  desuetude. 

After  the  religious  wars  were  over,  and  the  persecutions 
had  spent  their  force,  mankind  at  large  was  delivered  from 
the  fear  of  the  papal  censure.  Only  the  priests  of  the  church 
need  fear  the  wrath  of  the  church. 

Not  only  did  the  religious  revolution  limit  the  power  of 
the  Pope,  it  also  purified  his  court.  After  the  Reformation 
the  seat  of  Peter  was  never  again  defiled  by  the  occupancy 
of  such  monsters  as  Bartholomew  Cossa  (John  XXIII),  or 
by  such  rascals  as  Rodrigo  Borgia  (Alexander  VI),  or  even 
by  such  worldlings  as  Giovanni  de  Medici  (Leo  X).  The 
necessities  of  the  times  brought  to  the  front  men  of  different 
character  and  caliber, — men  less  able,  perhaps,  but  of  purer 
morals. 

The  Italian  voluptuary,  Leo  X.,  was  succeeded  by  the 
harsh,  stern,  ascetic  Adrian  of  Utrecht,  tutor  of  the  Emperor 
Charles  V,  who  saw  in  his  great  office  not  a  means  of  indulg- 
ing his  artistic  tastes  or  enriching  his  relatives  but  an  op- 
portunity to  serve  God  and  the  people.  He  struggled  to  make 
of  the  church  not  a  mere  political  machine  but  a  religious 
institution.  Adrian's  lot  was  not  a  happy  one.  He  was  a 
Netherlander  and  the  church  was  Italian;  he  was  pure  and 
the  church  was  corrupt;  he  was  religious  and  the  church 
political.  After  his  brief  pontificate  of  a  year,  which  did 
nothing  but  lay  bare  the  hideous  ulcer  that  was  eating  at 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  293 

the  vitals  of  the  church,  the  papacy  slipped  back  into  the 
keeping  of  the  family  of  the  Medici,  Giulio,  nephew  of  Leo-X, 
succeeding  Adrian.  Under  his  pusillanimous,  feeble  guid- 
ance, the  Roman  Church  drifted  on  to  ruin.  Giulio  de 
Medici, — who  took  the  name  of  Clement  VII, — shilly-shallied 
with  Henry  VIII  of  England  in  the  matter  of  the  divorce 
until  England  was  lost  to  the  church.  He  played  fast  and 
loose  with  the  Emperor,  until  in  desperation,  the  armies  of 
the  Emperor,  under  the  Constable  Bourbon,  stormed  and 
sacked  the  City  of  Rome. 

The  Papal  See  had  to  wait  twenty  years  for  the  three 
great  popes  of  the  counter  reformation :  Michele  Chislere, 
(Pius  V),  Ugo  Boncompagni  (Gregory  VIII),  and  Felice 
Peretti  (Sixtus  V)-  Under  these  pontiffs  the  course  of  the 
Reformation  was  arrested ;  France  became  once  more  the 
eldest  son  of  the  church,  Bavaria  and  South  Germany  re- 
turned to  the  fold  and  reaction  set  in  all  over  Europe.  Cathol- 
icism invaded  the  strongholds  of  Protestantism  and  kept  up 
a  guerilla  warfare  all  along  the  line. 

Under  the  impulse  of  the  scientific  movement,  the  church 
acquired  a  sanity  unknown  to  her  earlier  history.  She  de- 
pended less  on  miracles  and  more  on  moral  forces.  A  new 
order  of  saints  adorned  her  calendar.  St.  Francis  de  Sales, 
St.  Philip  of  Neri,  and  St.  Charles  Borromeo  were  men  of 
saner  mind  than  Benedict  of  Nursia,  St.  Chad  and  Cuthbert, 
or  even  St  Francis  of  Assisi.  The  only  miracles  wrought 
by  these  post-Reformation  saints  were  miracles  of  goodness 
and  marvels  of  benevolence.  St.  Ignatius  Loyola  placed 
at  the  service  of  the  church  not  the  miracle-mongering  of  the 
medievalist,  but  the  ardor  of  the  Spanish  lover  allied  to  the 
greatest  political  organizing  genius  of  his  or  any  other  age. 
Just  after  the  Reformation  the  Catholic  church  was  far  more 
sane  than  the  Protestant  bodies. 

The  church  became  more  masculine  in  its  way  of  thinking 
and  acting.  The  great  religious  wars  put  an  end  to  the 
feminism  of  the  Middle  Age;  Mary  began  to  lose  her  hold 
on  every-day  devotion-  Catholicism  did  not,  as  did  Protest- 
antism, cast  out  Mary  from  the  company  of  the  gods,  her 


294  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

doctors  did  not  follow  the  example  of  John  Knox,  who  tore 
down  the  painted  image  of  Mary  from  the  walls  of  the 
Cathedral  of  St.  Giles,  saying:  "Tis  naethin,  but  a  pinted 
boord,"  and  so  threw  it  into  the  street.  The  Catholic  fathers 
were  far  better  mannered,  they  used  the  political  artifices 
of  promotion  to  remove  the  goddess  out  of  the  way  of  the 
male  world  that  was  looking  for  male  gods. 

The  deification  of  Mary  was  the  care  of  the  Curia  and  the 
Jesuits ;  by  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception,  which 
became  an  article  of  the  faith  in  1854  by  decree  of  Pope  Pius 
IX,  Mary  was  delivered  from  the  curse  of  the  daughters  of 
Eve.  It  is  the  wretched  lot  of  the  common  woman,  accord- 
ing to  the  teachings  of  the  church,  to  conceive  in  sin  and 
shape  in  wickedness, — she  bears  in  her  womb  the  guilty  seed 
of  Adam  and  her  babe  comes  into  this  world  under  the  curse 
of  God.  From  this  miserable  estate  Mary  was  delivered  by 
the  miraculous  intervention  of  God- 

The  doctrine  of  her  perpetual  virginity  removed  Mary 
from  earth  to  heaven.  She  was  not  of  mortal  nature,  she  be- 
longed of  right  to  the  immortals.  The  Spanish  genius  of 
Murillo  paints  her  as  the  new  Artemis,  standing  in  the  cres- 
cent Moon,  surrounded  by  a  cloud  of  babies  that  were  never 
born,  and,  because  never  born,  never  grow  old,  but  play 
like  kittens  eternally  round  their  deity  in  the  upper  cirrus, 
where  Mary  stands  at  ease.  Such  a  goddess  may  condescend 
to  visit  the  earth  from  time  to  time  and  soothe  the  hysteria 
of  an  overwrought  nun,  she  may  step  out  from  the  Moon  to 
kiss  the  eyes  of  real  little  children,  but  she  can  never  be  the 
divinity  of  the  work-a-day  world ;  she  can  never  bend  her 
back  under  the  basket  nor  pin  up  her  skirts  and  with  bare 
feet  trample  the  grapes  in  the  wine  vats.  Her  delicacy  for- 
bids the  roughness  of  the  world.  Priests  might  exalt  her  and 
women  worship  her,  but  men  began  to  say:  "She's  naught 
but  a  woman,  and  this  is  a  man's  world-" 

Human  life  in  the  Sixteenth  and  Seventeenth  Centuries  in 
Europe  was  shifting  its  base  from  the  supernatural  to  the 
natural,  and  the  Church  was  slowly  following  the  shift.  The 
common  people  moved  more  rapidly  than  the  clergy.  The 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  295 

clergy  are  always  an  age  behind  the  people  in  all  that  regards 
the  common  life.  The  good  Cardinal  Pelliccia,  in  his  "Christ- 
ian Antiquities,"  speaking  of  the  vestments  of  the  clergy, 
says:  "These,  at  the  first  were  garments  common  to  the 
clergy  and  the  laity,  but  when  they  became  obsolete  with  the 
laity,  they  then  became  peculiar  to  the  clergy."  And  this  is  a 
general  proposition:  What  is  obsolete  with  the  laity  is  the 
peculiar  possession  of  the  clergy.  As  Mary  became  peculiar 
to  the  clergy,  the  monk,  and  the  nun,  she  became  more  and 
more  obsolete  with  the  laity. 

The  worship  of  the  Virgin  no  longer  holds  the  first  place 
with  the  man  of  Northern  Italy,  of  France,  and  of  England. 
The  cult  of  Joseph  is  superseding  the  cult  of  Mary.  The 
common  people,  reasoning  as  the  common  people  do,  mytho- 
logically,  are  finding  in  Joseph  a  god  in  accord  with  their 
present  thought  and  feeling.  In  spite  of  the  church  they  are 
in  this  cult  asserting  the  paternity  of  Joseph;  they  are  say- 
ing that  if  Jesus  were  a  son  he  must  have  had  a  father,  if 
Mary  was  a  mother  she  must  have  had  a  husband ;  and  who 
was  the  father  of  Jesus  and  the  husband  of  Mary  but  Joseph? 
History  knows  of  no  other.  So  Joseph  has  come  into  his 
own  again. 

For  centuries  the  theology  of  the  church  had  denied 
Joseph  the  company  of  his  wife  and  the  paternity  of  his  son- 
It  had  declared  him  unfit  for  the  high  and  holy  function  of 
husband  and  father;  he  had  been  made  to  play  the  ignoble 
part  of  a  protector  to  a  son  not  his  own,  and  the  guardian 
of  a  wife  who  was  a  wife  in  name  only.  But  all  this  the 
common  sense  of  the  common  people  is  correcting;  by  the 
worship  of  Joseph  they  are  asserting  the  divinity  of  the  hus- 
band and  the  father  over  against  the  divinity  of  the  mother 
and  the  son.  They  say  if  Jesus  is  on  the  right  hand  of  God, 
and  Mary  on  the  left,  then  Joseph  has  a  right  to  stand  before 
God  and  speak  his  mind.  He  can  know  better  the  needs 
of  man  than  a  woman,  he  is  nearer  to  the  earth  than  his  exalted 
son,  so  the  men  of  the  Fifteenth,  Sixteenth,  and  Seventeenth 
Centuries,  who  were  sailing  the  seas,  discovering  new  coun- 
tries, founding  new  states,  building  cities,  and  plowing  the 


206  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

wilderness,  turned  to  Joseph  as  to  a  god  who  was  himself  a 
man,  living  a  man's  life,  and  doing  a  man's  work. 

The  growth  of  the  cult  of  Joseph  in  the  modern  Catholic 
Church  is  a  growth  of  naturalism  at  the  expense  of  super- 
naturalism.  As  the  late  St  George-Mivart  (himself  a  Cath- 
olic, but  for  this  and  other  like  sayings,  excommunicated 
and  dying  outside  the  Catholic  pale)  said : 

"It  [the  cult  of  Joseph]  is  preparing  the  Catholic 
Church  to  acknowledge  the  natural  generation  of  Jesus 
and  to  confess  the  sanctity  of  nature." 

For  which  act  of  condescension,  when  it  comes,  Nature, 
with  her  cleansing  waters  and  her  stainless  skies,  will  forever 
be  beholden  to  Holy  Church. 


CHAPTER  LIX 
The  Gods  Break  Loose 

The  revolution  in  Europe  that  gave  to  the  Western  world 
freedom  of  thought  and  conscience  (miscalled  the  Reforma- 
tion) came  with  violence.  It  was  a  shifting  of  the  base  of 
human  life  from  heaven  to  earth.  It  was  a  struggle  between 
freedom  and  authority,  between  imperialism  and  nationalism, 
between  centralization  and  home  rule-  It  was  a  conflict  be- 
tween the  god  of  the  church  and  the  god  of  the  world.  Prince 
and  priest  were  fighting  to  the  death  in  this  warfare. 

Luther,  when  he  nailed  his  thesis  to  the  door  of  the  church 
in  Wittenberg,  was  in  reality  only  the  spokesman  of  the 
Elector  of  Saxony.  It  was  Frederick  who  stood  behind 
Luther  and  urged  him  on.  All  the  princes  of  North  Germany 
were  in  rebellion  against  the  papal  and  the  imperial  system. 
They  received  no  blessing  from  the  Pope  and  no  protection 
from  the  empire.  The  exactions  from  the  papal  and  imperial 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  297 

treasuries  impoverished  them  and  their  people.  Frederick 
bit  his  nails  in  anger  and  disgust  when  his  rival  Albert  of 
Brandenburg,  under  cover  of  the  sanction  of  the  Pope,  sent 
his  hawkers  of  indulgences  into  the  Electorate  of  Saxony,  to 
get  money  to  pay  for  the  Archbishopric  of  Mayence. 

When,  then,  Luther  called  the  people  to  revolt,  he  had  not 
only  the  tacit  consent,  he  had  the  active  cooperation  of  the 
Prince.  It  was  the  princes,  as  the  representatives  of  the 
people,  who  were  the  earliest  beneficiaries  of  the  so-called 
Reformation.  Luther  appealed  from  the  Pope  to  the  princes, 
and  the  princes  sustained  his  appeal. 

In  this  crisis  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  was  revived  and 
made  its  last  struggle  for  supremacy  in  Europe.  Just  after 
the  outbreak  of  the  Reformation  the  throne  of  the  Empire 
was  vacated  by  the  death  of  Maximilian.  The  vacancy  was 
contested  by  three  brilliant  young  princes  who  had  just  suc- 
ceeded to  the  thrones  of  the  three  leading  monarchies  in 
Western  Europe:  the  gallant  Francis  I  of  France;  the  bluff, 
impulsive  Henry  VIII  of  England,  and  the  man  of  genius, 
Charles  V  of  Spain,  were  the  rivals  for  the  imperial  purple. 

Charles,  a  prince  of  Austria,  of  the  house  of  Hapsburg, 
secured  the  prize. 

Upon  this  young  man  fortune  had  showered  all  her  favors. 
In  the  right  of  his  father  Philip,  he  was  the  Lord  of  Flanders, 
Brabant,  and  all  the  rich  provinces  of  the  Netherlands ;  in 
the  right  of  his  mother  Johanna  he  was  heir  to  the  throne  of 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella  who  had,  by  the  conquest  of  Granada, 
extinguished  the  dominion  of  the  Moors  and  had  made  of  old 
Hispania  the  consolidated  kingdom  of  Spain.  And  as  if  this 
were  not  enough,  fortune  sent  Columbus  avoyaging  that  she 
might  pour  the  gold  of  the  Montezumas  and  the  Incas  into 
the  lap  of  her  favorite. 

'Nor  was  Charles  unworthy  of  his  fortune,  being  comely 
of  person,  acute  and  far-seeing  of  mind,  and  possessed  of  that 
subtle  quality  that  we  call  genius.  Furthermore,  he  was  a 
soldier  of  no  mean  capacity;  he  was  cautious  in  victor}'  and 
imperturable  in  defeat. 


298  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

As  a  ruler  Charles  V  was  perplexed  by  the  multitude  of  his 
affairs  and  the  heterogeneity  of  his  dominions.  The  Nether- 
lands, Spain,  and  America  presented  problems  of  government 
beyond  the  power  of  any  man  to  grasp  and  solve.  Lord  of 
the  Netherlands  at  fifteen,  King  of  Spain  at  seventeen,  Charles 
at  the  age  of  twenty-two  was  the  most  considerable  personage 
of  Europe-  For  thirty-two  years  he  weathered  the  storms 
of  the  stormiest  period  of  human  history,  and  as  a  worn-out 
old  man  laid  down  the  cares  of  empire  at  fifty-five  and  retired 
to  a  monastery,  where  he  died. 

Such  was  the  leader  of  the  forces  of  the  old  order  in  the 
warfare  between  the  priests  and  the  people.  Charles,  after 
some  vacillations,  embraced  the  fortunes  of  the  papacy  and 
devoted  his  energies  during  the  greater  portion  of  his  reign 
to  the  suppression  of  heresy  and  reestablishment  of  the 
Catholic  faith.  He  placed  the  Protestant  princes  under  the 
ban  of  the  Empire.  These  princes  in  the  year  1528  assembled 
in  Schmalkald,  formed  a  league,  offensive  and  defensive,  and 
made  war  upon  the  Emperor-  The  war  of  Schmalkald  was 
a  war  between  Protestant  and  Catholic  Europe ;  it  was  a 
war  between  North  and  South  Germany ;  it  was  the  beginning 
of  the  rivalry  between  Prussia  and  Austria.  In  Germany  this 
war  lasted  (with  interregnums)  for  a  hundred  and  twenty 
years ;  by  it  Germany  was  desolated ;  the  soldiery,  Catholic 
and  Protestant,  were  equally  ruthless,  cities  were  sacked, 
children  murdered,  and  women  violated  in  the  name  of  Christ 
and  in  the  name  of  the  Pope.  As  the  war  went  on  the  armies 
of  Wallenstein  from  the  south  and  of  Gustavus  Adolphus 
from  the  north,  overran  the  country  and  left  a  wasted  land 
behind  them. 

Peace  came  with  the  treaty  of  Westphalia  in  1648.  Writing 
of  this  period  Menzel  says : 

Misery  and  suffering  had  cooled  the  religious  zeal  of  the 
people,  license  that  of  the  troops,  and  diplomacy  that  of  the 
princes.  The  thirst  for  blood  had  been  satiated  and  pas- 
sion worn  out  by  excess  slumbered.  Peace  was  at  this 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  299 

juncture  proclaimed  throughout  the  Empire  to  all  besieged 
cities,  to  the  trembling  princes,  to  the  wailing  people.1 

Then,  as  now,  poor  Belgium  was  the  meeting-place  of  the 
contending  armies. 

Upon  the  abdication  of  Charles  V  his  wide  dominions  be- 
came the  possession  of  his  son  Philip  II.  Philip  had  nothing 
of  the  genius  of  his  father.  He  was  a  Spaniard  by  birth  and 
nature  and  a  bigot  of  the  old  faith.  He  made  the  suppression 
of  heresy  and  the  reestablishment  of  Catholicism  the  sole 
purpose  of  his  reign-  In  that  effort  he  lost  the  Northern 
Provinces  of  the  Netherlands,  impoverished  Spain,  reduced 
that  country  from  the  first  to  the  third  State  in  Europe,  and 
forced  it  to  enter  upon  a  decline  from  which  it  has  never 
recovered. 

The  new  faith  spread  rapidly  in  the  Netherlands.  It  won 
to  its  leadership  a  genius  of  the  first  order;  William  (called 
the  Silent)  Prince  of  Orange, — who  is  one  of  the  heroic 
figures  of  history.  There  was  nothing  in  the  youth  or  early 
manhood  of  this  prince  to  forecast  the  future  that  was  to 
make  him  remembered  for  all  ages.  Brought  up  as  a  Catholic, 
in  the  court  of  Charles  V,  he  was  a  favorite  of  the  Emperor, 
who  leaned  on  his  shoulder  on  the  day  of  his  abdication.  A 
free  liver,  William  expended  the  revenues  of  his  rich  posses- 
sions and  involved  himself  in  debt,  but  in  common  with  all 
the  princes  and  nobles  (Protestant  and  Catholic)  of  the 
Netherlands  he  resented  the  violation  of  the  liberties  of  the 
Provinces  by  the  tyrannies  of  Philip  II-  With  Egmont, 
Horn,  and  others,  Orange  entered  upon  a  constitutional  op- 
position to  the  policy  of  Philip.  When  Egmont  and  Horn 
were  betrayed  and  beheaded,  the  burden  of  leadership  fell 
upon  William,  and  he  proved  himself  equal  to  the  task.  He 
renounced  his  Catholicism ;  the  extravagancies  of  his  youth 
fell  from  him,  and  he  came  to  be  known  as  Father  William, — 
plain,  homely,  a  leader  rather  than  a  ruler  of  his  people. 
Under  his  steady  hand  the  revolution  in  the  Netherlands,  so 
far  as  the  Northern  Provinces  were  concerned,  was  conducted 
to  a  successful  issue. 

1Mcnzel's  "History  of  Germany,"  Bohn  Edition,  vol.  II,  pp.  394-5. 


300 

Philip  threw  against  this  indomitable  man  and  his  people 
all  the  forces  of  Spain.  The  Duke  of  Alva  practiced  every 
stratagem  and  cruelty  known  to  warfare-  The  Duke  was  a 
pious  Catholic ;  he  went  to  Mass  every  morning  and  he 
called  his  soldiers  to  go  to  Mass  and  then  from  the  altar  of 
his  God  he  went  out  to  lay  waste  the  fields,  to  burn  the  cities, 
to  murder  the  men,  and  outrage  the  women  of  Flanders,  Bra- 
bant, Hainault,  Holland,  and  Zeeland.  He  besieged,  took, 
and  sacked  Antwerp,  and  in  the  sacking  of  that  city  there 
was  no  horror  left  undone.  He  went  out  toward  Flushing, 
and  the  people  opened  their  dykes  and  flooded  him  with  the 
waters  of  the  sea. 

In  the  wars  of  the  Netherlands,  it  is  estimated  that  more 
than  a  million  people  perished  by  violence,  and  property 
exceeding  in  value  five  hundred  million  pounds  was  trodden 
under  foot  and  burned  by  fire.  The  wars  of  the  gods  are 
costly. 

During  all  this  carnage  William  was  silent,  steady,  un- 
conquerable- To  get  rid  of  him,  Philip  had  to  have  him 
assassinated.  But  dead,  he  still,  by  his  spirit,  held  the  people 
to  their  task.  Exhausted  Spain  was  compelled  to  grant  in- 
dependence to  the  Northern  Provinces,  and  Holland,  for  a 
brief  period,  succeeded  Spain  as  a  leading  country  of  Europe. 

In  France,  the  old  and  the  new  gods  fought  for  the  mastery 
on  the  open  field  and  by  secret  assassination,  respectively  on 
the  field  of  Ivry  and  in  the  Massacre  of  St.  Bartholemew, 
Henry  of  Navarre  gave  religious  peace  to  France  by  compro- 
mise. He  bought  Paris  by  a  Mass-  He  embraced  the  old 
faith,  without  believing  it ;  gave  freedom  to  the  new  faith, 
without  caring  for  it ;  turned  the  minds  of  men  from  religion 
to  politics  and  to  women;  fought  Catholic  or  Protestant,  as 
suited  his  schemes;  prepared  the  way  for  Richelieu,  who  pur- 
suing the  indifferent  policy  of  Henry  in  matters  of  religion, 
made  France  the  arbiter  of  Europe. 

In  the  struggle  between  the  old  and  the  new  gods  France 
suffered  the  loss  of  her  religious  life  and  her  moral  integrity. 
Formally  Catholic, — really  atheistic;  her  manners  depraved, 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  301 

her  politics  corrupt, — she  entered  upon  that  downward  career 
that  brought  her  to  the  horrors  of  the  Revolution. 

In  England  the  struggle  between  the  old  and  new  was 
neither  so  violent  nor  so  bloody  as  that  of  the  Continent,  nor 
was  it  so  radical.  Fortunately,  the  king  wanted  a  divorce 
and  broke  with  the  Pope,  who  would  not  give  it  to  him- 
Mary,  by  the  sacrifice  of  a  few  lives  in  the  fires  of  Smithfield, 
hoping  to  make  England  Catholic,  succeeded  in  making  that 
country  Protestant  beyond  reclamation.  Elizabeth  estab- 
lished a  hybrid  church, — Protestant  in  doctrine,  Catholic  in 
ministry  and  worship, — which  to  this  day  has  satisfied  the 
religious  requirements  of  the  English  people. 

When  the  religious  wars  were  over,  the  gods  of  the  past 
were  driven  back  to  their  old  seats  in  the  Mediterranean 
basin ;  the  gods  of  the  new  order  possessed  the  North  and 
the  West.  London  was  the  center  of  exchange ;  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  succeeded  the  Middle  Sea  as  the  highway  of  commerce, 
and  mankind  began  a  great  movement  from  the  Old  World 
to  the  New  in  search  of  new  homes  and  new  gods. 


BOOK  X 
GODS  OF  THE  MODERN  WORLD 


CHAPTER  LX 
The  Disruption  of  Protestantism 

The  movement  in  the  religious  history  of  the  Western 
world,  known  as  the  Reformation,  was  far  more  destructive 
than  reformatory.  Beginning  as  an  effort  to  restore  the 
church  to  its  primitive  purity,  it  accomplished  the  complete 
disruption  of  the  organization  and  made  of  a  united  Catholic 
Church  a  congery  of  hostile  sects.  Protestantism,  based  as 
it  is  upon  a  contradiction,  is  by  name  and  nature  disruptive  in 
its  effect;  for,  while  appealing  to  authority,  it  asserts  the  right 
of  private  judgment  in  matters  of  faith.  Private  judgment 
and  authority  cannot,  however,  live  together  in  peace.  It  is 
as  if  one  tied  a  cat  and  a  snake  together  in  a  bag:  the  cat  will 
claw  the  life  out  of  the  snake,  or  the  snake  will  strangle  the 
cat. 

Protestantism  was  not  progressive,  it  was  a  reactionary 
movement;  it  had  no  desire  to  explore  the  future,  its 
only  wish  was  to  restore  the  past.  Luther's  first  appeal 
from  the  Pope  was  to  a  General  Council  of  the  church, — 
a  General  Assembly  wherein  he  might  ask  the  church  to 
decide  the  matters  at  issue  between  himself  and  the  Holy 
See.  But  it  was  not  for  a  monk  to  call  a  General  Council; 
that  was  the  province  of  the  Pope  and  the  Emperor.  In 
the  absence  of  the  Emperor,  Luther  appealed  to  the  princes 
of  the  Empire,  many  of  whom  joined  with  him  in  this  de- 
mand for  a  reforming  council. 

In  this  action  the  Reformers  were  in  accord  with  usage, 
for  all  church  disputes  had  been  settled  in  General  Councils. 
Only  a  hundred  years  before  the  outbreak  of  Lutheranism 
the  Council  of  Constance  had  met  in  1414  for  the  reforming 
of  the  church  in  its  head  and  members,  had  deposed  the 

305 


306        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

reigning  Pope,  John  XXIII,  and  had  elected  the  Cardinal 
Colonna,  Martin  V,  in  his  room.  It  was  not  until  the  Diet 
of  Augsburg,  in  1531,  that  the  Lutheran  quarrel  took  on  the 
nature  and  proportions  of  a  schism. 

In  the  Diet  of  Augsburg,  the  Emperor,  Charles  V,  made 
submission  to  the  Pope  a  condition  of  imperial  protection, 
whereupon  the  Lutheran  princes  protested  and  withdrew 
from  the  Diet  and  a  war  between  the  Empire  and  the  Re- 
formers ensued, — a  war  that  lasted  for  a  hundred  years. 

The  protesting  princes  directed  their  theologians  to  draw 
up  a  Confession  of  Faith,  which  document,  known  as  the 
Augsburg  Confession,  is  to  this  day  the  theological  creed 
of  all  Lutheran  bodies,  and  is  the  source  of  the  XXXIX 
Articles  of  the  English  church. 

The  Confession  takes  over  bodily  from  the  ancient  church 
the  theology  of  the  Greek  philosophers  and  of  the  Latin 
lawyers.  Its  conception  of  God  is  the  conception  of  Athan- 
asius  and  Augustine.  The  doctrines  of  the  Trinity,  the 
incarnation,  the  atonement,  the  final  judgment,  heaven  and 
hell,  together  with  the  sacraments,  were  all  reaffirmed  in 
the  Augsburg  Confession, — a  confession  that  discarded  the 
authority  of  the  Pope,  the  worship  of  the  saints,  and  the 
celibacy  of  the  clergy,  and  denied  all  merit  to  good  works, 
making  salvation  by  faith  only  the  emphatic  Article  of  the 
revised  creed. 

The  new  movement,  when  organized,  simply  substituted 
one  church  for  another.  In  this  church  the  princes  were 
the  popes  and  the  theological  faculties  the  cardinals.  The 
new  orthodoxy  was  even  more  rigid  than  the  old ;  heresy 
was  punished  by  fire  and  sword,  not  only  as  treason  to  the 
church  but  as  rebellion  against  the  prince.  Lutheranism 
when  crystallized  became  the  state  religion  of  Northern  Ger- 
many and  Scandinavia,  and  it  is  so  to  this  day. 

But  this  newly-established  church  could  not  control  the 
Protestant  movement.  Next  in  importance  to  Luther  in  the 
world  of  modern  religion  was  John  Calvin,  a  native  of  Pic- 
ardy  in  France.  Banished  from  his  own  country  by  the 
Catholic  King,  he  fled  to  Geneva,  where  he  converted  the 
people  to  the  new  faith  and  established  his  religious  capital 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  307 

as  the  rival  of  Rome.  The  history  of  the  next  hundred 
years  was  the  history  of  the  struggle  of  Rome  with  Geneva 
for  supremacy  in  France,  the  Netherlands,  and  Great  Brit- 
ain. 

Calvin,  like  Luther,  was  not  a  progressive  but  a  reaction- 
ary; his  appeal  was  from  the  church  to  the  Bible.  He  put 
the  human  mind  in  thrall,  not  to  Athanasius  or  Augustine 
but  to  Moses  and  Isaiah,  to  Jeremiah  and  David,  to  Paul 
and  John.  Calvin  revived  the  worship  of  the  God  of  the 
Book:  the  God  of  Calvin  was  to  be  found  in  the  Book  and 
nowhere  else  but  in  the  Book.  Under  the  hand  of  this 
master  workman  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  were  inspired  line 
by  line,  word  by  word,  comma  by  comma,  by  Jehovah,  God 
of  the  Hebrews;  the  writers  of  the  Book  were  the  penmen 
of  Jehovah,  inscribing  his  thoughts  and  writing  of  his  life. 
So  perfect  was  this  work  of  Calvin  that  to  this  day  hosts 
of  educated  men  and  women  think  when  they  are  reading 
the  Bible  that  they  are  reading  the  history  of  God.  It  is 
only  in  our  day  and  among  the  more  advanced  minds  that 
the  Bible  has  lost  its  peculiar  place  of  sanctity  and  been 
restored  to  its  lawful  position  among  the  literatures  of  the 
world. 

This  talismanic  book  was  the  sole  rule  of  faith  in  the 
Genevan  church,  to  be  interpreted  by  each  man  according 
to  the  light  that  was  in  him;  but  woe  be  to  that  man  who 
interpreted  it  contrary  to  the  construction  put  upon  the 
Word  by  Calvin  and  the  doctors.  Such  a  one  was  a  heretic, 
fit  only  for  exile  and  burning. 

Calvin  was  a  metaphysical  genius.  At  the  age  of  twenty- 
seven  he  wrote  "The  Institutes  of  the  Christian  Religion," 
which  ever  since  has  been  the  quarry  of  Protestant  Evang- 
elical theology.  Calvin's  scheme  rests  as  on  a  corner  stone, 
upon  the  absolute  sovereignty  of  God.  Its  cardinal  text  is 
"The  Lord  God  Omnipotent  Reigneth."  There  is  one  God 
and  there  is  none  besides  Him.  The  omnipotence  of  God 
is  limitless, — what  He  wills  He  wills — and  nothing  lies  out- 
side His  will.  Logically,  Calvin  was  as  much  a  Unitarian 
as  Mahomet,  but  being  a  schoolman,  he  was  enmeshed  in 


308        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

the  contradictions  of  Greek  theology,  which  he  took  over 
bodily  and  incorporated  in  his  plan  of  salvation. 

Second  in  importance  to  the  sovereignty  of  God  was  the 
doctrine  of  the  total  depravity  of  the  nature  of  man,  conse- 
quent upon  the  sin  of  Adam.  In  the  thought  of  Calvin  man 
as  man  is  under  the  wrath  of  God,  condemned  to  .eternal 
torment.  God  in  his  good  pleasure,  to  show  forth  his  glory, 
elected  or  selected  a  chosen  few  of  these  lost  wretches  to 
salvation ;  the  Son  of  God,  the  Second  Person  of  the  Holy 
Trinity,  voluntarily  undertaking  to  pay  the  proper  penalty 
of  their  sin.  In  this  plan  of  reorganization,  Calvin  allowed 
only  two  sacraments:  baptism  and  the  Lord's  supper  (and 
the  Lord's  supper  was  a  memorial  feast,  not  a  sacrifice); 
did  away  with  the  altar  and  the  priest,  and  established  the 
pulpit  and  the  preacher. 

This  form  of  religion,  in  the  period  of  its  expansion,  freed 
the  Netherlands  from  the  bondage  of  Spain,  gave  civil 
liberty  to  England,  and  laid  the  foundations  of  the  Am- 
erican Commonwealth. 

The  Calvinist  took  over  all  the  promises  of  Jehovah  to 
Israel.  He  was  the  chosen  of  God,  his  God  was  the  War- 
God  of  Israel.  As  God  had  drowned  the  Egyptians  in  the 
waters  of  the  Red  Sea,  so  did  he  sweep  the  cohorts  of  Alva 
to  their  death  by  the  waves  of  the  Zuycler  Zee.  The  men  of 
Cromwell  drove  the  army  of  Charles  I  from  Marston-Moor 
crying:  "The  sword  of  the  Lord  and  Gideon!"  The  Pilgrim 
Fathers  on  the  Mayflower  laid  the  foundations  of  a  new 
nation  on  the  Word  of  God.  Few  movements  in  human 
history  have  been  more  prolific  of  results  than  the  Genevan 
movement  of  John  Calvin. 

A  third  variety  of  Protestantism  found  its  expression  in 
the  teaching  of  Huldreich  Zwingli,  of  the  Canton  of  Saint 
Gall  in  Switzerland,  who  made  his  appeal  from  the  church 
to  the  Bible  as  interpreted  by  the  human  reason.  This 
movement,  at  the  first  feeble  to  abortiveness,  has  gradually 
permeated  both  Lutheranism  and  Calvinism  and  is  at  pres- 
ent the  most  influential  force  in  Protestant  Christendom. 
The  Bible  as  interpreted  by  the  reason  is  becoming  more 
and  more  the  religion  of  the  Protestant;  but  this  is  only  a 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  309 

half-way  station,  the  road  must  end  in  the  constant  dis- 
ruption and  final  disappearance  of  Protestantism.  Already 
the  critical  reason  has  destroyed  the  authority  of  the  Bible 
as  an  infallible  revelation  from  God. 

Primitive  Protestantism,  in  its  three  phases  of  Luther- 
anism,  Calvinism,  and  Zwinglianism,  was  the  creation  of 
the  rising  burgher  class, — the  religious  form  of  the  struggle 
between  the  merchant  and  the  landlord.  In  its  result  it 
brought  about  the  partial  triumph  of  the  purse  over  the 
sword.  In  this  form  of  Protestantism  religion  ceased  to  be 
pietistic  and  became  materialistic ;  its  virtues  were  the 
virtues  of  the  merchant  cla^s;  it  went  short  on  sanctity  and 
long  on  respectability.  Carlyle  designates  this  sort  of  re- 
ligion as  "gigmanity,"  since  no  one  could  be  reckoned  a 
good  Protestant  who  had  not  risen  to  the  dignity  of  riding 
in  his  own  gig. 

The  mean  workmen  and  the  poor  have  never  been  at 
home  in  the  Protestant  churches;  at  best  these  are  allowed 
in  Protestant  places  of  worship  only  on  sufferance.  They 
can  sit  in  back  seats  and  in  remote  galleries,  but  must  never 
trespass  on  the  preserves  of  the  pew-holder. 

In  the  Anabaptist  movement,  which  had  its  center  in 
Munster,  an  effprt  was  made  to  democratize  Protestantism. 
The  leaders  of  this  movement,  who  were  either  of  the  work- 
ing class  or  allied  themselves  with  that  class,  proclaimed 
the  doctrine  of  free  consent  as  the  basis  of  the  religious 
life,  every  man  being  given  the  liberty  to  choose  his  god  by 
the  free  act  of  his  own  will.  On  this  ground  the  Anabaptist 
denied  the  validity  of  infant  baptism,  declaring  such  baptism 
was  void,  because  it  was  not  preceded  by  the  free  choice 
of  the  baptized  person.  Not  only  baptism  but  all  church 
rites  and  legal  forms  were  subject  to  the  acid  test  of  free 
choice.  No  one  was  to  be  required  to  believe  what  he  did 
not  choose  to  believe,  nor  to  do  what  he  did  not  choose  to 
*jdo. 

This  doctrine, — freeing,  as  it  did,  men  and  women  from 
the  binding  rules  of  an  oppressive  social  order, — gained 
great  headway  with  the  working  classes  who  are  the  vic- 
tims of  that  order.  Had  the  Munster  movement  succeedr 


310        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

ed,  the  working  class  revolution  that  is  now  in  progress 
would  have  been  anticipated  by  three  centuries.  But  it 
could  not  succeed,  because  its  time  was  not  yet  come.  The 
merchant  class  had  to  evolve  and  prevail  before  the  working 
class  could  attain  to  that  degree  of  class  consciousness  and 
class  solidarity  which  has  given  it  its  power  in  the  present 
world. 

The  uprising  of  the  working  people  in  Munster,  and 
other  cities,  under  the  leadership  of  Zwickaw,  Storch,  and 
Stubner,  was  suppressed  with  terrible  slaughter,  and  the 
peasants'  war,  which  threatened  for  a  time  the  destruction 
of  the  whole  social  ordter,  was  arrested  by  the  same  ruth- 
less methods.  After  this  conflict  with  the  working  class, 
Lutheranism,  Calvinism,  and  Zwinglianism  hardened  into 
the  forms  that  they  have  held  to  this  day.  They  are  little 
aristocracies  based  upon  material  wealth ;  high  church  Lu- 
theranism is  the  natural  meeting-place  of  the  old  and  the 
new  aristocracy;  Calvinism  is  the  home  of  the  successful 
merchant ;  and  Zwinglianism  the  club  of  the  successful  scholar 
and  professional  man. 

The  working  class  is  either  Catholic  or  agnostic.  The 
Catholic  church  remains  to-day,  as  it  has  been  since  the 
days  of  Leo  I,  a  vast  imperial  democracy,  while  the  Protest- 
ant churches  are  little  aristocratic  republics ;  and  imperial 
democracy  rather  than  aristocratic  republicanism  has  al- 
ways been  the  refuge  of  the  working  class. 

Protestantism  in  all  its  forms  is  to-day  in  process  of 
dissolution.  It  has  divided  and  sub-divided  until  it  has  at 
last  lost  its  explosive  power.  It  can  no  longer  so  much  as 
cast  off  new  bodies  from  itself.  Its  conceptions  of  the 
world  are  outgrown,  its  teachers  ar£  without  authority, 
its  various  churches  competing  for  membership  are  by  this 
competition  becoming  bankrupt.  With  creeds  discredited, 
with  people  destitute  of  cohesive  energy,  organic  Protest- 
ism  is  slowly  but  surely  melting  away,  and  its  forces,  so 
long  restrained  in  a  congealed  orthodoxy,  are  flowing  down 
in  streams  to  the  great  sea  of  living  thought. 

There  are  in  the  United  States  about  20,000,000  Pro- 
testants divided  into  more  than  100  sects,  ministered  to 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  311 

by  170,000  clergy,  with  an  average  congregation  of  150  and 
an  average  salary  of  $600.  These  facts  speak  for  them- 
selves. 


CHAPTER  LXI 

The  Crystallization  of  Catholicism 

As  a  consequence  of  its  struggle  with  Protestantism, 
Catholicism  crystallized  its  past  and  by  that  crystallization, 
made  forever  impossible  its  adaptation  to  the  changing 
thought  and  life  of  the  world.  At  the  Council  of  Trent 
the  church  reaffirmed  its  ancient  doctrines  and  its  ancient 
rights.  It  did  not  abate  one  jot  or  one  tittle  of  its  claims 
to  the  spiritual  and  political  sovereignty  of  the  world.  The 
Pope,  as  the  successor  of  Peter  and  as  the  Vicar  of  Christ, 
exercised  all  the  powers  of  God  in  the  earth. 

Prior  to  the  Protestant  movement  the  Roman  papacy 
partook  in  a  small  degree  of  the  nature  of  a  constitutional 
monarchy;  since  the  Reformation  it  has  developed  into  an 
imperial  autocracy.  By  the  decree  of  papal  infallibility  of 
the  Vatican  Council  of  1870,  the  last  vestige  of  Con- 
stitutionalism was  removed  from  the  papacy,  so  that  to-day 
the  Pope  rules  alone  in  the  church  in  all  matters  of  doctrine 
and  discipline,  creates  all  cardinals,  appoints  all  bishops 
in  foreign  parts  and,  either  directly  or  by  means  of  his 
appointed  agents,  regulates  the  most  minute  affairs  of  the 
church. 

Under  the  present  order  of  the  Catholic  church,  the  Pope 
is  the  incarnation  of  the  Celestial  Caesar  of  the  Roman 
lawyers.  As  God  rules  in  heaven,  so  does  the  Pope  rule 
in  the  earth,  and  any  rebellion  against  him  is  treason 
against  God.  Theoretically,  there  is  no  limit  to  the  power 
of  the  pontiff.  As  the  supreme  authority  in  all  that  con- 
cerns faith  and  morals,  he  has  the  right  of  control  over  the 
education  of  the  young;  the  relationship  of  husband  and 
wife  is  in  his  keeping;  he  has  the  censorship  of  all  think- 


312       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

ing,  writing  and  speaking.  When  there  is  any  conflict 
between  the  civil  mind  and  the  mind  of  the  Pope  the  mind 
of  the  Pope  has  the  right  of  way.  He  as  the  Supreme  Pas- 
tor of  the  Flock  of  Christ, — the  court  of  final  appeal  in  all 
disputes  relating  to  conduct  and  opinion.  The  present 
Pope,  by  right  of  his  office,  is  as  much  the  ruler  of  the 
world  as  was  Gregory  VII  or  Innocent  III,  nor  was  Boni- 
face VIII  more  drastic  in  the  assertion  of  papal  claims 
than  is  the  present  Pontifex  Maximus;  together  with  his 
cardinals. 

The  power  of  the  Pope  is  limited  only  by  the  Catholic 
tradition.  No  Pope  may  go  contrary  to  Catholic  tradi- 
tion, for  that  would  be  to  do  violence  to  his  own  authority, 
which  has  its  source  in  this  same  Catholic  tradition.  At 
the  Reformation,  Catholic  tradition  was  finally  crystallized 
into  theological  dogma,  and  by  this  crystallization  the  primi- 
tive and  medieval  world  survives  into  modern  times.  In 
its  political  organization,  in  its  conception  of  nature,  in  its 
thoughts  of  life  and  death,  in  its  notions  of  God,  in  its  de- 
scriptions of  heaven  and  hell,  in  its  cult  of  the  saints,  in  its 
reverence  of  the  clergy,  in  its  worship  of  the  Pope,  we  have 
in  crystallized  form  all  that  was  active  and  living  in  the  life 
of  Western  Europe  Irom  trie  Fourth  to  the  Fifteenth  Cen- 
tury. This  church  has  resisted  with  crystalline  power  all 
efforts  of  modification  from  within,  but  has  been  worn  away 
by  the  slow  corroding  process  of  attrition  from  without. 

The  creedal  division  of  Europe  at  the  close  of  the  reli- 
gious war  was  as  it  is  now :  Southern  Europe  was  stead- 
fastly Catholic,  Northern  Europe  as  firmly  Protestant,  with 
France  as  doubtful  territory  lying  between,  and  Ireland, 
for  racial  and  political  reasons,  more  intensely  Catholic 
than  Rome  itself.  In  America  to-day  the  like  division  pre- 
vails :  North  America  belongs  to  Protestantism,  with  a 
Catholic  infusion,  and  South  America  and  Mexico  are 
Catholic,  with  a  tendency  toward  rationalism. 

Since  the  Reformation  the  Catholic  Church  has  continued 
to  work  along  the  lines  of  more  perfect  crystallization,  every 
attempt  from  within  to  adapt  the  church  to  present  life 
and  thought  having  met  with  signal  failure. 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  313 

In  the  Seventeenth  Century,  Molinos,  a  Spanish  priest 
resident  in  Paris,  was  enamoured  of  the  discipline  of  the 
German  Quietists.  He  sought  to  make  the  life  of  the  soul  less 
dependent  upon  the  church;  and  while  not  denying  the 
value  of  confession,  of  public  prayer,  and  of  the  Holy  Sac- 
rament of  the  Altar,  he  insisted  that  spiritual  life  was,  in 
its  essence,  the  direct  communion  between  the  soul  of  man 
and  the  spirit  of  God;  that  it  was  a  secret  life,  and  not 
even  a  priest  had  the  right  to  pry  into  this  holy  relationship, — 
when  the  lover  was  with  his  beloved  the  door  was  shut 
against  all  curious  eyes.  This  teacher  discouraged  frequent 
confession,  deplored  constant  resort  to  a  spiritual  director, 
and  made  public  prayer  subordinate  to  private  prayer  and 
meditation.  Molinos'  teaching  came  as  a  breath  of  fresh 
air  to  a  people  weary  of  formal  religion.  Fashionable  Paris, 
especially  the  women,  ran  after  Molinos  and  his  church  was 
crowded  whenever  he  gave  the  sermon  or  meditation. 

From  Paris  Molinos  went  to  Rome  and  was  received 
with  acclaim  by  clergy  and  people.  Many  of  the  cardinals 
were  numbered  with  his  followers,  and  it  was  hinted  that 
even  the  Pope  inclined  to  his  teaching.  For  a  moment 
it  seemed  as  if  the  Catholic  Church  would  readmit  by  the 
back  door  what  it  had  driven  out  by  the  front;  but  this  was 
not  to  be.  The  Jesuit  Order  took  alarm,  the  Holy  Office 
of  the  Inquisition  became  active;  in  a  night  Molinos  and  a 
host  of  his  followers,  among  whom  were  high  dignitaries 
of  the  church,  found  themselves  in  the  grip  of  that  mysteri- 
ous and  terrible  power.  His  following  dispersed,  Molinos 
was  condemned  as  a  heretic  and  languished  in  prison  for  the 
rest  of  his  life. 

Another  effort  at  modification,  made  in  the  Seventeenth 
Century  by  a  group  of  French  pietists,  came  to  a  like  disas- 
trous end.  This  endeavor  had  its  origin  in  the  writings 
of  one  Jansenius,  Bishop  of  Ypres  in  the  Low  Countries, 
who,  tinged  with  Calvinism,  gave  to  the  Grace  of  God 
an  undue  place  in  his  theological  scheme.  These  writings 
of  his  failed  to  allow  due  prominence  to  the  rites  of  the 
church  and  the  merits  of  the  saints,  while  they  laid  undue 


314       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

stress  on  personal  holiness  as  a  requisite  of  salvation.  His 
rather  commonplace  book  became  the  inspiration  of  a  move- 
ment that  for  a  time  threatened  once  more  the  unity  of  the 
church.  A  devoted  band  of  men  and  women  (known,  from 
the  Convent  that  was  their  headquarters  as  the  Port- 
Royalists), — some  of  them  the  leading  minds  of  the  time, 
such  as  Pascal,  his  sister  Jacqueline,  and  Arnaud,  a  pro- 
fessor of  the  Sorbonne, — became  the  disciples  of  the  new 
cult. 

The  Jesuits  were  the  sworn  enemies  of  the  Jansenists, 
and  the  struggle  between  these  factions  disturbed  the  peace 
of  the  church  for  nearly  fifty  years, — a  conflict  made  forever 
famous  by  the  "Lettres  Provinciates"  of  Pascal,  in  which, 
with  an  irony  unrivalled  in  literature,  he  attacked  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Jesuits  and  laid  open  the  secret  sources  of  their 
power. 

But,  despite  the  weapon  of  Pascal's  genius  hurled  in  deri- 
sion against  the  morality  of  the  teachings  of  the  Jesuits,  and 
despite  the  eloquence  and  learning  of  Arnaud,  the  cause  of 
the  Jesuits  triumphed.  The  Convent  of  Port-Royal  was 
suppressed,  its  preachers  silenced,  its  nuns  were  scattered 
abroad,  and  the  Catholic  Church  in  France,  because  it  knew 
not  the  time  of  its  visitation,  was  left  to  await  its  destruc- 
tion in  the  storms  of  the  Revolution. 

In  the  Nineteenth  Century  the  Catholic  Church  had  for  a 
moment  a  liberal,  reforming  Pope  in  the  person  of  Pius  IX, 
who  at  his  election  was  hailed  as  the  coming  liberator  of 
Italy.  But  early  in  his  reign,  frightened  by  the  violence 
and  radicalism  of  the  liberal  movement,  Pius  became  an 
extreme  reactionary. 

In  the  Encyclical  of  1854,  he  condemned  modern  science ; 
he  made  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of 
the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary  de  fide,  and  in  the  Council  of 
the  Vatican  declared  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope  to  be  an 
Article  of  Faith  of  the  Catholic  Church.  When  Doellinger 
and  the  theological  faculty  of  Munich, — the  one  Catholic  in- 
stitution of  learning  that  had  standing  in  Europe, — pro- 
tested against  the  dogma  of  the  infallibility  as  unhistorical, 
these  great  scholars  were  excommunicated  and  died  without 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GJDS  315 

the  pale  of  that  Communion  which  for  a  generation  they 
had  served  with  a  learning  and  a  zeal  that  gave  to  their 
church  the  respect  of  the  thinking  world  of  the  time.  Yet 
these  were  men  who  had  sought,  in  a  small  measure,  to 
adapt  the  Catholic  Church  to  the  thought  and  mind  of  the 
modern  world,  for  which  progressive  act  the  church  cast 
them  out  as  unholy  and  as  violators  of  their  vows! 

The  amusing  attempt  of  a  group  of  French  and  English 
priests  to  rewrite  the  dogmas  of  the  church  in  terms  of 
modernism  is  a  matter  of  recent  history.  Pius  X  in  the  En- 
cyclical de  Pascendi  condemned  modernism, — root  and 
branch.  The  Modernists  in  return  wrote  saucy  letters 
to  the  Pope  intimating  that  His  Holiness  did  not  quite  know 
what  he  was  talking  about.  But  for  all  this,  Pius  was  the 
Pope,  and  the  Modernists,  giving  up  the  effort  of  reform 
from  within,  left  the  church  to  its  incurable  conservatism, 
and  now  are  among  the  most  brilliant  writers  and  speakers 
on  matters  of  religion  in  the  Western  world.  Father  Tyr- 
rell is  dead,  Pere  Loisy  is  in  retirement,  but  Joseph  McCabe, 
DeLisle  Burns,  and  Mr.  Sullivan  are  preaching  by  pen  and 
tongue  a  doctrine  of  Modernism  that  is  destructive  of 
ancient  dogma,  both  Protestant  and  Catholic. 

Because  of  the  rigor  of  its  crystallization  the  Catholic 
Church  has  lost  the  spiritual  and  moral  leadership  of  the 
Western  world.  In  the  present  crisis  the  Pope  is  helpless. 
Imprisoned  in  the  Vatican,  he  can  only  look  on  and  bewail 
moral  evils  and  spiritual  horrors  that  he  is  powerless  to 
avert.  Pius  X  died  in  an  agony  of  impotence.  The  present 
Pope  lives  unregarded  in  the  presence  of  a  cataclysm  that 
is  shaking  Christendom  to  its  foundations  and  changing 
the  order  of  the  world.  His  powers,  in  inverse  ratio  to  his 
claims,  make  of  him  an  object  of  commiseration.  How  are 
the  mighty  fallen !  He  who  could  once  make  emperors 
tremble  and  kings  afraid,  he  at  whose  word  nations  bowed  in 
fearful  submission,  cannot  now  get  so  much  as-  a  hearing  in 
the  councils  and  conflicts  of  the  nations.^  The  Catholic 
Church  has  sacrificed  its  life  to  its  organization.  Like  the 
Roman  Empire,  of  which  it  is  the  ghost  in  the  modern  world, 
it  is  as  perfect  as  a  crystal, — and  as  dead  as  a  crystal. 


316  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

CHAPTER  LXII 
The  Return  of  Pan 

Both  the  Catholic  and  the  Protestant  denominations  for  the 
past  four  hundred  years  and  more  have  been  subjected  to  a 
pressure  from  without,  which,  with  all  the  force  of  a  slow- 
moving  glacier,  has  ground  the  brittle  dogmas  of  Protestant- 
ism to  powder  and  has  reduced  the  crystalline  form  of  the 
Catholic  Church  to  comparatively  diminutive  proportions. 
This  force  has  been  the  operation  of  the  free  intelligence 
;  in  the  investigation  of  natural  and  social  phenomena. 

Three  great  movements  of  the  human  mind  during  this 
period  have  completely  destroyed  the  ancient  and  medieval 
scheme  of  the  universe,  thus  making  the  dogmatic  state- 
ments of  the  church  impossible  to  the  educated  man.  These 
three  movements  were  the  revival  of  letters,  the  development 
of  science,  and  the  democratic  revolution.1 

The  first  of  these,  the  revival  of  letters,  came  at  the 
end  of  the  Fifteenth  Century,  as  a  consequence  of  the  fall 
of  Constantinople.  Toward  the  end  of  that  century,  in  the 
year  ^403,'  Constantine,  the  last  of  the  emperors,  died  in 
the  defense  of  his  city,  and  the  capitol  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire was  stormed  and  sacked  by  the  hordes  of  Mahomet, 
the  Turkish  Sultan.  Christian  men  and  women  of  noble 
birth  were  bound  together  like  sheep  and  sold  as  slaves 
in  the  shambles. 

Prior  to  the  capture  of  the  city  many  distinguished  schol- 
ars had  fled  from  the  wrath  to  come  and  had  made  their 
way  to  Rome  and  other  Italian  cities,  carrying  with  them  a 
store  of  precious  manuscripts  of  the  poems  of  Homer,  the 
dramas  of  JEschylus,  and  other  writings  of  the  classical 
literature  of  Greece.  These  exiles,  in  order  to  earn  their 
living,  established  themselves  as  teachers  of  the  Greek 
language  and  literature,  and  under  their  inspiration  Greek 

1  The  democratic  revolution  is  so  vast  a  subject  that  it  calls 
for  separate  treatment  in  an  additional  volume. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  317 

learning  became  all  the  rage  in  Italy,  whence  it  spread 
rapidly  over  western  Europe,  changing  radically  the  course 
of  study  in  every  seat  of  learning.  The  writings  of  the 
Christian  fathers  and  the  schoolmen  fell  at  once  into  dis- 
repute; the  Holy  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ment were  thrust  into  the  background,  while  the  scholar- 
ship of  Europe  occupied  itself  with  the  mastery  of  the 
language  and  literature  of  the  Athens  of  Pericles  and  Plato. 
Greek  manuscripts  brought  fabulous  prices,  and  the  dis- 
covery of  a  new  parchment  was  an  event  to  stir  the  heart 
of  the  world. 

This  passion  for  Greek  learning  gave  rise  in  Europe 
to  a  passion  equally  intense  for  the  Greek  life.  The  ascet- 
ic ideal  of  the  Christian  religion  became  abhorrent  to  these 
students  of  Greek  culture.  Nature,  which  the  church  had 
condemned  as  unholy,  was,  by  this  revolution  in  thought 
made  divine ;  the  human  passions  and  appetites,  it  was 
agreed,  were  given  to  man  for  his  delight;  their  suppression 
not  their  indulgence  was  the  sin;  and  it  was  the  right  and 
duty  of  every  man,  as  he  was  able,  to  live  the  full,  free 
life  of  the  senses.  Wine,  women,  and  song  were  as  neces- 
sary to  his  proper  development  as  were  bread  and  water. 
Popes,  priests,  and  people  threw  off  the  restraints  of  the 
then  old-fashioned  religion  of  Christ,  and  gave  themselves 
up  without  restraint  to  the  worship  of  Pan ;  and  that  god 
of  the  Greeks,  half  man,  half  beast,  became  the  favorite  di- 
vinity of  the  Hellenic  revival  of  the  Fifteenth  Century  in 
Italy  and  Europe.  The  more  sober  of  the  Greek  gods,  such 
as  Apollo  and  Athena,  were  neglected,  while  men  and  wo- 
men practiced  with  feverish  haste  the  sensual  rites  of 
Aphrodite  and  Dionysus.  The  men  of  that  age  reacted  with 
fearful  violence  from  the  religion  of  Grace  to  the  religion 
of  Nature. 

The  leaders  of  this  reaction  were  the  Popes,  the  cardinals, 
and  the  clergy  of  the  Catholic  Church.  The  court  of  Leo 
X  was  in  belief  and  practice  openly  Pagan.  The  pontiff 
and  his  courtiers  practiced  all  the  vices  and  but  few  of  the 
virtues  of  Grecian  antiquity.  These  men  made  a  scoff  of 
the  religion  that  they  administered,  and  went  from  the  altar 


318        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

to  the  free  indulgence  in  wine  and  women  as  a  relief  from 
its  tediousness.  No  age  of  the  world  has  surpassed  the 
Italian  Renaissance  in  licentiousness  and  cruelty. 

The  effect  of  the  revival  of  Greek  learning  was  the  de- 
liverance of  letters  from  bondage  to  the  church.  Pro- 
fane writings  competed  with  the  sacred  Scriptures  for  the 
interest  of  the  reader,  and  as  the  profane  were  the  more  in- 
teresting, they  commanded  the  greater  attention.  From 
that  time,  even  until  now,  no  man  is  considered  worthy  of 
admission  to  Holy  Orders  in  the  English  Church  until  he 
has  mastered  the  amatory  odes  of  Anacreon  and  the  love 
songs  of  Theocritus.  A  strange  marriage  was  made  between 
Christian  austerity  and  Greek  freedom,  the  product  of  which 
has  been  the  English  bishop,  together  with  his  deans  and 
canons. 

The  Catholic  clergy  of  the  Fifteenth  Century,  in  embrac- 
ing the  Greek  learning,  warmed  in  their  bosom  a  serpent 
that  stung  their  theology  to  death. 


provocative  of  thought,  and  thought  was  a  corrosive  poison 
[atal  to  theological  dogma. 

The  history  of  the  Catholic  Church  since  the  Renaissance 
has  been  the  history  of  a  long  and  bitter  struggle  with  the 
virus  of  Greek  literature,  with  its  concomitant  freedom  oi 
thinking,  which  its  Popes,  its  cardinals,  its  bishops,  and  its 
deans  so  unwisely  introduced  into  its  veins. 


CHAPTER  LXIII 
The  Vision  of  The  Infinite 

The  revival  of  letters,  which  made  the  mind  of  Christen- 
dom acquainted  with  a  non-Christian  past  of  great  beauty 
and  significance,  was  quickly  followed  by  another  event 
which  opened  to  the  Western  vision  a  future  of  astound- 
ing importance.  When  Columbus  sailed  from  Palos  to 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  319 

the  West  he  was  seeking  a  more  direct  route  to  the  ports 
of  China  and  India.  His  discovery  of  a  continent  lying 
between  the  West  and  the  East  seemed  so  incredible  that 
the  discoverer  himself  could  not  believe  it.  After  four 
voyages,  and  the  exploration  of  what  are  now  known  to  be 
the  shores  of  Central  and  South  America,  Columbus  died 
in  the  belief  that  what  he  had  found  was  nothing  more  than 
the  outlying  regions  of  the  Chinese  and  Indian  Empires. 
So  convinced  was  he  of  this  that  he  called  the  natives  of 
these  newly  discovered  lands  Indians,  and  as  Indians  they 
have  been  known  ever  since. 

It  required  a  century  and  more  of  exploration  and  adven- 
ture to  convince  Europe  that  it  had  found  not  the  ancient 
land  of  Cathay  but  a  region  vast  in  extent,  rich  in  natural 
wealth,  lying  open  to  the  possession  and  settlement  of  the 
first-comer.  Not  only  did  this  discovery  inflame  the  am- 
bition of  the  European  to  extend  his  sway  over  the  lands 
beyond  the  sea,  it  had  the  further  effect  of  sending  him  out 
on  voyages  of  exploration  into  the  heavens.  Successful 
curiosity  begat  curiosity. 

The  accepted  astronomical  system  of  Ptolemy,  which  had 
the  imprimatur  of  the  church,  failed  to  satisfy  the  more 
acute  minds  that  were  studying  the  movements  of  the  sun, 
the  moon,  and  the  stars.  The  system  of  Ptolemy  placed 
the  earth  in  the  center  of  the  universe  as  a  fixed  point,  and 
caused  the  sun,  moon  and  stars  to  revolve  around  it  by 
means  of  crystal  spheres,  in  cycles  and  epicycles.  The 
phenomena  of  the  passing  of  the  sun  through  the  signs  of 
the  zodiac,  the  nodes  of  the  moon,  and  the  procession  of 
the  equinoxes  were  all  accounted  for  by  an  elaborate  ma- 
chinery of  motions  and  counter-motions  in  the  crystal 
spheres.  This  machinery  was  so  complicated,  so  clumsy, 
that  it  caused  Sancho,  King  of  Aragon,  to  say  to  his  astron- 
omer that  had  he  been  in  the  councils  of  the  Creator  he 
could  have  suggested  simpler  methods  of  regulating  the 
heavenly  bodies  and  their  movements. 

This  dissatisfaction  of  Sancho  with  the  system  of  Ptolemy 
was  shared  by  many  minds  engaged  in  active  search  for  the 
simpler  methods  that  the  King  of  Aragon  desired.  Among 


320        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

these  explorers  of  the  sky  was  Nicholas  Copernicus,  an  ob- 
scure Polish  priest.  After  trying  patiently,  but  in  vain, 
to  make  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars  conform  to  the  system 
of  Ptolemy,  he  finally  discarded  that  system  altogether, 
and  by  a  daring  flight  of  intellectual  imagination,  placed 
himself  in  the  sun  and  observed  the  movements  of  the 
heavenly  bodies  from  that  coign  of  vantage.  No  sooner 
had  he  found  himself  at  this  new  point  of  observation  than 
he  perceived  that  the  movements  of  the  celestial  orbs  were 
simplified  and  accounted  for  by  making  the  sun  the  fixed 
point  in  relation  to  the  earth  and  causing  the  earth  to 
travel  in  a  circular  path  around  the  sun,  as  a  central  body, 
once  every  year.  By  a  revolution  of  the  earth  on  its  own 
axis,  Copernicus  accounted  for  the  phenomena  of  night  and 
day;  for  by  this  process  the  earth  was  constantly  putting 
its  own  bulk  between  itself  and  the  light,  and  the  darkness 
of  night  was  nothing  else  than  the  shadow  of  the  earth. 

Copernicus  further  observed  that  certain  stars,  which 
were  called  "planets"  or  "wandering  stars,"  were,  like  the 
earth,  moving  in  a  circuit  round  the  sun.  Some  nearer  the 
sun  than  the  earth  moved  within  the  earth's  circuit,  others 
farther  away  described  a  path  far  outside  that  of  the  earth. 
From  all  these  observations  the  astronomer  concluded  that 
the  earth  (itself  a  planet  or  wandering  star)  was,  in  obedi- 
ence to  some  unknown  law  of  motion,  moving  with  other 
planets  about  their  common  center.  As  the  final  outcome 
of  his  explorations,  Copernicus  postulated  the  Solar  Sys- 
tem, consisting  of  a  given  number  of  heavenly  bodies  in  a 
common  central  control. 

; 

The  publication  to  the  world  of  the  results  of  the  ob- 
servations of  Copernicus  is  the  beginning,  in  a  rough  way, 
of  the  scientific  movement,  which  from  that  time,  with  ac- 
celerating rapidity,  has  destroyed  the  ancient  and  medieval 
conceptions  of  the  universe  and  has  made  a  new  and  vaster 
v  thought-world  for  the  mind  of  man  to  live  in. *- 

Copernicus  died  on  the  day  that  the  book  containing  his 
solar  theory  was  placed  in  his  hands ;  thus  he  reaped  from 
his  labors  neither  glory  nor  shame.  His  book,  like  all  such 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  321 

original  works  of  genius,  did  not  at  first  attract  the  atten- 
tion of  the  world.  Only  professional  astronomers  saw  its 
significance  and  mastered  its  reasoning.  The  doctors  and 
rulers  of  the  church,  busy  in  the  administration  of  ecclesias- 
tical and  political  affairs,  were  not  alive  to  the  new  danger 
that  threatened  them.  It  was  not  until  Galileo  began  to 
teach  in  Italy  the  doctrine  of  the  Polish  astronomer  that 
the  authorities  of  the  church  became  alarmed  and  endeavored 
to  suppress  this  dangerous  heresy. 

Galileo  was  already  a  distinguished  astronomer;  by  means 
of  the  newly  invented  telescope,  he  had  explored  the  heavens, 
had  discovered  the  rings  of  Saturn  and  the  moons  of  Jupi- 
ter. Coming  soon  to  the  conclusion  that  the  naked  eye  of 
man  saw  only  the  outer  edges  of  a  vast  universe,  which 
was  opened  to  his  gaze  by  means  of  the  magnifying  power 
of  the  telescopic  lens,  Galileo  embraced  the  theory  of 
Copernicus  with  ardor,  as  the  only  reasonable  explana- 
tion of  what  he  had  observed  in  the  sky.  The  earth's 
motion  was  to  him  a  self-evident  fact  (he  could  see  it 
move),  and  when,  in  the  prison  of  the  Inquisition,  in  or- 
der to  save  his  life,  he  was  forced  to  deny  that  motion, 
under  his  breath  he  still  cried:  "It  does  move." 

The  struggle  of  the  old  system  of  astronomy  with  the 
new  was  short  and  sharp.  Everywhere  the  new  doctrine 
was  received  with  acclaim  by  astronomers.  Giordano  Bruno 
gave  to  the  theory  of  Copernicus  a  wider  sweep  when  he 
made  the  assertion  that  the  fixed  stars  were  so  many  suns, 
each  with  its  system  of  planetary  worlds. 

In  the  presence  of  so  stupendous  a  thought,  the  little  uni- 
verse of  theology, — with  its  definite  heaven,  its  compact 
earth,  and  its  central  hell, — ceased  to  exist;  it  was  lost  in 
the  grandeur  and  the  sublimity  of  the  Infinite,  so  suddenly 
uncovered  to  the  gaze  of  man. 

In  vain  the  church  silenced  Galileo  and  burned  Giordano 
Bruno  in  the  Piazza,  del  Fiore  in  Rome.  In  spite  of  every 
effort,  the  system  of  Copernicus  was  accepted  and  perfected 
by  each  succeeding  astronomer.  Kepler  brought  greater 
order  into  the  solar  system  by  substituting  the  ellipse  for 


322       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

the  circle  of  Copernicus;  Newton  welded  the  whole  into 
perfect  unity  by  his  discovery  of  the  principle  and  rule  of 
gravity, — thus  giving  a  reasonable  explanation  to  the  phen- 
omena of  heavenly  motions,  and  so  making  it  impossible 
for  the  mind  to  entertain  any  theory  other  than  that  of 
Copernicus. 

Within  a  century  and  a  half  of  the  death  of  Copernicus 
the  church  gave  up  the  battle  for  Ptolemy  as  lost,  discarded 
his  system,  and  taught  in  all  her  schools  the  doctrine  that 
she  had  once  denied  and  persecuted  as  destructive  of 
her  dogma.  That  she  has  been  able  to  survive  this  disaster 
is  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  universe  of  Copernicus  is  too 
vast  for  the  common  mind  to  live  in.  It  is  only  the  greater 
souls  that  can  look  in  the  face  of  this  Infinite  and  live. 
Lesser  spirits  must  hide  themselves  from  that  face  by  some 
Mosaic  veil,  some  lesser  conception  that  shall  give  to  them 
a  protection  from  the  vastness  of  the  Infinite. 

There  are  millions  to-day  who  still  live  in  the  system 
of  Ptolemy,  with  its  stationary  earth  and  moving  sun,  with 
its  nearby  heaven  and  its  subterranean  hell;  these  souls  na- 
turally find  in  the  church  a  shelter  from  the  greatness  of 
the  world.  But  such  protection  is  becoming  every  day  more 
and  more  precarious.  The  intellect  and  soul  of  man  is  ever 
expanding  to  accommodate  itself  to  its  new  and  glorious 
habitation.  Every  year  the  number  of  those  seeking  the 
shelter  of  the  church  is  decreasing,  while  those  who  are 
finding  themselves  at  home  in  the  open  are  a  mighty  host, 
rejoicing  in  their  new-found  liberty.  To  them  the  heavens 
declare  the  glory  of  the  Infinite  and  the  firmament  showeth 
His  handiwork.  One  day  telleth  another  and  one  night  cer- 
tifieth  another,  and  there  is  neither  speech  nor  language, 
but  their  voices  are  heard  among  them.  The  Infinitude  of 
man  is  responding  to  the  Infinitude  of  God. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  323 

CHAPTER  LXIV 
The  Vision  of  The  Eternal 

The  mind  of  Christian  Europe  had  not  yet  recovered  from 
the  shock  consequent  upon  the  discovery  of  new  continents, 
and  the  expansion  of  the  universe  into  infinite  space,  before 
it  was  thrown  into  a  fever  of  consternation  by  the  assertion 
that  the  history  of  this  earth  extended  back  into  an  eternal 
past  and  had  the  promise  of  an  eternal  future.  In  the 
presence  of  this  conception,  the  4004  B.  C.  of  Bishop  Usher's 
chronology,  instead  of  measuring  the  antiquity  of  the  world, 
did  not  so  much  as  span  the  modern  era.  In  the  history 
of  the  human  race  it  was  but  a  moment;  in  geological  time 
but  the  infinitesimal  fraction  of  an  instant.  From  this 
point  of  view  men  reckoned  the  duration  of  the  earth  not  in 
years  but  in  aeons;  they  spoke  not  of  this  or  that  year 
but  of  this  or  that  age. 

This  revolution  in  thought  was  accomplished  with  less 
spectacular  violence  than  was  occasioned  by  the  change 
in  the  conception  of  the  relation  of  the  earth  to  the  sun.  It 
was  not  so  dramatic  a  transformation,  and  the  general  mind, 
after  the  discovery  of  America  and  the  acceptance  of  the 
Copernican  theory,  was  more  open  to  change  of  view. 

The  notion  of  the  earth's  antiquity  came  to  the  mind 
of  man  as  the  result  of  an  investigation  into  the  structure 
of  the  rock  foundations  of  the  earth.  In  the  beginning  it 
was  an  accidental  rather  than  a  conscious  movement  of  the 
human  intelligence.  Thoughtful  quarry-men  and  masons 
found  strange  forms  imbedded  in  the  stones  which 
they  handled ;  they  saw  the  impression  of  a  fish  or  fern 
outlined  in  a  rock,  and  they  began  to  speculate  as  to  the 
meaning  of  these  curious  plays  of  nature.  The  cogitations 
of  these  unlettered  men  were  reenforced  by  the  more  dis- 
ciplined minds  of  wandering  scholars,  who  found  the  re- 
mains of  marine  animals  far  up  the  mountain  side,  hun- 
dreds of  miles  from  any  sea.  All  of  this  stimulated  man's 
unquenchable  curiosity,  and  one  after  another  gave  himself 
up  to  the  study  of  the  history  of  the  rocks  of  the  earth. 


324        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

It  was  not  long  before  the  conclusion  was  forced  upon 
the  observer  that  the  facts  under  investigation  could  not 
be  accounted  for  on  the  theory  that  the  formation  of  the 
earth  had  always  been  as  it  is  now.  The  student,  as  he 
turned  over  the  rocks,  read  on  their  surface  the  account  of 
changes  vast  in  their  proportions  and  requiring  ages  upon 
ages  for  their  accomplishment.  The  petrified  trilobite  testi- 
fied to  the  fact  that  the  uplifted  mountain  side  upon  which 
it  was  found  had  once  be~en  the  shore  of  a  sea;  the  coal 
found  in  the  depths  of  the  earth  was  seen  to  be  the  re- 
mains of  submerged  forests  that  at  one  time  had  grown 
and  flourished  on  the  open  ground.  These  and  like  discover- 
ies gave  to  man  a  new  notion  of  antiquity.  He  learned  that 
the  continents,  the  islands,  the  rivers,  the  lakes,  and  the 
seas  that  we  know  are  comparatively  new  to  their  place ; 
where  now  is  a  mountain  was  once  a  sea,  and  the  floor  of  the 
sea  was  once  a  mountain-top.  Instead  of  the  everlasting 
hills  of  the  Psalmist,  it  was  perceived  that  the  life  of  a  hill 
was,  in  its  degree,  as  transitory  as  the  life  of  a  man.  It 
was  here  in  a  geological  to-day  and  gone  in  a  geological 
to-morrow. 

The  cause  of  these  changes  in  the  structure  of  the  earth 
was  at  first  ascribed  to  overwhelming  catastrophes  which 
has  cast  down  the  mountains  and  uplifted  the  seas.  The 
agents  of  change  were  subterranean  fires  issuing  in  volcanic 
eruption.  But  it  was  soon  discovered  that,  while  volcanic 
fire  had  played  its  part  in  the  drama  of  geological  history, 
it  was  by  no  means  the  only  .actor  on  the  stage.  The  ques- 
tion soon  arose  as  to  whether  water  rather  than  fire  were 
not  the  hero  of  the  play.  If  fire  had  upheaved  the  moun- 
tains, water  had  washed  them  down ;  the  action  of  fire  was 
sporadic,  while  that  of  water  was  constant.  Geologists 
at  first  divided  into  the  schools  of  Plutonists  and  Neptun- 
ists,  but  were  at  last  reconciled  by  the  discovery  that  Pluto 
and  Neptune  were  partners  in  the  business  of  making  and 
remaking  the  rocks  of  the  earth ;  for  Pluto  welded  the  gran- 
ite, while  Neptune  laid  down  the  sandstone.  It  was  also 
discovered  that  Pluto  and  Neptune  were  still  on  the  job, — Pluto 
blew  the  bellows  of  his  forge  at  Vesuvius  and  /Etna,  while  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  325 

waters  of  Neptune  carried  silt  down  every  hillside,  to  form 
fresh  sandstone  on  the  bottom  of  every  sea.  It  was  at  last  the 
conviction  of  geologists  that  past  changes  in  the  formation  of 
the  earth  could  be  accounted  for  by  the  operation  of  present 
forces.  This  process  of  change  was  still  going  on  and  could  be 
studied  on  every  mountain  peak  and  seashore,  and  of  this 
process  the  geologist  could  see  "no  sign  of  a  beginning,  no 
forecast  of  an  end."1 

The  Biblical  theologians  were  bewildered  and  shocked  beyond 
measure  by  these  assertions  of  the  geologists.  They  could  not, 
they  would  not  believe  such  blasphemies.  The  Bible  said  the 
world  was  made  in  six  days,  and  what  the  Bible  said  must  be 
true,  for  was  not  the  Bible  the  Word  of  God?  "And  let  God 
be  true  and  every  stone  a  liar."  If  the  world  were  of  such  vast 
antiquity,  where,  then,  did  God  begin  His  work  of  creation? 

For  fifty  years  the  pulpit  raged  against  geology  as  the  in- 
vention of  Satan ;  the  fossils  were  placed  in  the  rocks  by  God 
to  fool  the  geologists,  to  their  eternal  damnation ;  to  be  a  geologist 
was  to  be  an  atheist.  If  the  world  had  been  torn  down  and  built 
up  a  thousand  times,  what  was  the  use  of  a  God?  If  there  had 
never  been  a  creation,  where,  then,  was  the  Creator? 

In  this  contention  of  theology  with  geology  there  were  no 
imprisonments,  no  burnings.  The  geologists  were  for  the  most 
part  men  of  the  North,  where  the  mind  of  man  had,  in  a  measure, 
been  delivered  from  bondage  to  ecclesiastical  control. 

In  due  time  the  theologians  found  it  painful  to  kick  against 
the  pricks ;  little  by  little  the  facts  penetrated  their  own  minds 
and  could  not  be  ignored.  At  first  the  theologian,  shifting  his 
ground  from  absolute  denial,  tried  to  reconcile  geology  and 
Genesis.  The  days  of  the  Bible  became  the  aeons  of  geology. 
But  finding  this  work  of  reconciliation  mere  child's  play,  the 
clergy  gave  up  the  Bible  altogether  and  went  over  mind  and 
soul  to  geology.  And  now  some  of  the  most  ardent  and  learned 
of  geologists  are  to  be  found  in  the  ranks  of  the  clergy. 

That  Christian  men  recovered  so  quickly  from  the  shock 
of  geological  discovery  and  displacement,  and  reconciled  their 

1  Lyell's   "Principles  of   Geology." 


326        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

religion  to  their  science,  is  owing  toUthe  psychological  fact  that 
all  past  time  is  equally  distant.  Memory  can  as  easily  (and 
sometimes  more  easily)  recall"  the ,  happenings  of  ten  years  ago 
as  the  happenings  of  last  week/  And  in  history  ten  million 
zeons  is  no  more  distant  than  ten  thousand  years.  It  requires 
a  trained  mind  and  great  powers  of  reflection  to  grasp  the 
significance  of  the  ageless  duration  of  the  earth.  Such  minds, 
which  are  increasing  in  number  every  day,  have  a  vision  of 
the  Eternal  which  makes  the  conception  of  a  definite  special 
creation  impossible  to  their  thoughts.  They  do  not  seek  a  Cre- 
ator in  some  past  event  or  future  happening.  For  them  Creator 
and  Creation  are  One. 


CHAPTER   LXV 
The  Making  of  Man 

The  sixth  decade  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  was  made  for- 
ever famous  by  the  publication  of  a  scientific  theory,  which, 
even  more  than  the  astronomical  theory  of  Copernicus,  or  Gali- 
leo, or  the  geological  theory  of  Playfair  and  Hutton,  was  at 
war  with  the  theological  conception  of  the  universe.  In  this 
instance,  science,  leaving  the  outlying  region  of  the  stars  and 
coming  down  from  the  mountain  tops,  entered  the  secret  cham- 
bers of  life.  It  began  to  trace  all  living  forms  back  to  their 
origin  and  to  account  for  their  variations  by  natural  causes. 

The  human  mind  had  from  the  beginning  been  bewildered  by 
the  multitude  of  living  creatures  that  disputed  with  man  the 
possession  of  the  earth.  Insect  and  reptile,  bird  and  beast  of 
varied  form  and  habit,  met  him  at  every  turn,  they  threatened 
his  life  by  day  and  disturbed  his  sleep  by  night.  Some  of  the 
higher  forms  of  animal  life  had,  indeed,  been  converted  to  the 
uses  of  man  ;  he  had  butter  and  milk  from  the  cattle,  wool  from 
the  sheep,  the  horse  carried  him  on  his  journeys,  and  the  dog 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  327 

was  his  companion  in  the  chase  and  his  guardian  in  the  camp. 
At  home  and  abroad  man  was  in  constant  contact  with  this 
multiform  animal  life. 

As  soon  as  the  intelligence  of  man  was  sufficiently  developed 
he  studied  the  animal  world  and  endeavored  to  find  some  ra- 
tional explanation  of  its  origin, — some  principle  of  order  in 
the  midst  of  its  confusion.  In  the  course  of  his  investigation, 
he  found  that  there  were  only  four  or  five  architectural  plans 
employed  in  the  construction  of  the  various  animal  forms. 
Therefore,  he  reasoned,  the  first  and  obvious  effort  was  to 
classify  these  creatures  according  to  the  basic  plan  of  their 
structure.  So  they  were  arranged  in  the  orders  of  vertebrates, 
molluscs,  crustaceans,  and  the  like.  But  in  these  genera  were 
an  almost  infinite  number  of  species,  and  within  the  species 
still  more  bewildering  varieties.  As  if  living  forms  were  not 
sufficiently  confusing,  geology  must  unearth  a  vast  number  of 
extinct  species,  like  and  yet  unlike  to  existing  species. 

After  the  work  of  classification  was  in  a  measure  accom- 
plished, the  question  of  origins  forced  itself  upon  the  mind  of 
the  student:  How  did  the  various  species  come  into  existence? 

To  all  outward  appearances  these  species  were  fixed  and 
permanent.  Each  specie  continued  its  kind  from  generation 
to  generation;  dog  begat  dog,  man  begat  man,  and  there  seemed 
no  exception  to  this  rule.  It  was,  then,  natural  to  trace  dogs 
back  to  the  first  dog  and  men  back  to  the  first  man.  Then 
came  the  further  question:  What  was  the  origin  of  the  first 
dog  and  the  first  man? 

To  this  question  theology  gave  the  easy  answer  that  the  first 
dog  and  the  first  man  were  the  creation  out  of  hand  of  a  God. 
With  some  notable  exceptions  it  was  universally  held  by  scien- 
tists and  laymen  up  to  the  sixth1  decade  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury that  each  species  of  vegetable  and  animal  life  was  a  dis- 
tinct creation.  A  Being,  called  "Jehovah"  or  "Elohim"  by  the 
Jews,  (which  names,  as  translated  into  English,  are  God  and 
Lord)  made  the  various  specific  forms  of  animal  life  one  by 
one,  endowed  each  with  the  power  to  reproduce  its  kind,  and 
after  this  manner  every  living  form,  from  the  infusoria  to  the 
man,  came  into  existence. 


328  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

This  creationist  theory  never  found  universal  acceptance.  It 
was  not  known  to  the  primitive  man ;  the  absolute  fixity  of 
species  had  not  entered  his  mind ;  in  his  thought  it  was  an  easy 
thing  for  a  man  to  become  a  wolf,  or  a  woman  a  snake;  and 
so  far  from  believing  that  all  the  species  were  the  creation  of 
a  common  Creator,  he  assigned  to  various  gods  the  work  of 
moulding  the  forms  and  giving  life  to  the  various  kinds  of 
vegetable  and  animal  existence.  So  far  as  one  is  able  to  master 
the  thought  of  prehistoric  man  as  we  find  it  expfessed  in  the 
myths  that  he  has  handed  down  to  history,  one  gathers  that  the 
ancient  belief  gave  to  each  order  of  life  its  own  creative  power. 
The  god  of  the  species  was  the  species  constantly  creating  and 
re-creating  itself.  This  faith  found  expression  in  the  fetich,  in 
the  worship  of  trees  and  animals. 

Among  ancient  philosophers  there  was  a  decided  disposition 
to  hold  the  doctrine  of  transformation,  and  to  consider  it  a  possi- 
ble thing  for  one  form  of  life  to  pass  into  another ;  thus,  a  man 
might  become  a  dog  and  a  dog  a  man.  This  is  akin  to  the 
Eastern  doctrine  of  the  transmigration  of  life,  or  soul,  through 
the  various  forms  of  existence. 

The  West  derived  ij£  hard-and-fast  theory  of  creation 
from  Hebrew  sources.  /The  Hebrew  thinkers,  unlike  the  In- 
dian and  the  Greek  philosophers,  did  not  derive  mankind  by 
generation  from  the  Divine,  but  by  creation.  God  did  not 
beget  iiTan' "He  made  him^f  This  thought  shaped  all  the  religious 
conceptions  of  the  Hebrew.  God  to  him  was  not  in  the  world, 
He  was  outside  of  it, — just  as  a  maker  is  outside  his  manufac- 
ture. This  thought  pictures  God  as  a  workman  in  his  shop, 
fashioning  one  object  after  another  and  laying  each  aside  when 
finished.  As  a  potter  moulding  his  clay  on  his  wheel,  each 
vessel  of  life  is  fashioned  by  the  will  of  the  potter  to  its  de- 
signed use, — some  to  honor,  some  to  dishonor. 

This  theory  of  creation  brought  in  question  the  skill  and  the 
wisdom  of  the  Creator.  Why  should  Infinite  Wisdom  employ 
the  leisure  of  His  Infinity  in  creating  the  vermin  and  the  fly? 
Why  should  He  contrive  the  tarantula  and  the  Gila  monster  .J 
These  and  like  perplexities  disturbed  the  mind  of  the  most  de- 
vout believer  in  God  as  the  Creator  of  the  world. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  329 

Beside  these  moral  difficulties,  the  theory  of  creation  is  be- 
set with  intellectual  perplexities.  The  life  history  of  the  hu- 
man form  is  an  amazing  sight  to  contemplate  from  the  view- 
point of  the  creationist.  Beginning  in  the  slime,  a  mere  cell  of 
protoplasm,  passing  in  the  embryonic  stage  through  the  various 
cycles  of  animal  existence,  now  breathing  through  the  gills  like 
a  fish,  now  shaped  like  a  dog;  born  helpless,  crawling,  speech- 
less, evolving  through  savagery  and  barbarism  to  a  state  of  man- 
hood consistent  with  his  environment, — the  human  being  by  his 
life  history  accuses  his  Creator  of  useless  complexity  and  con- 
fusion in  the  manner  of  his  creation.  If  in  the  beginning  God 
made  man  by  a  separate  creative  act,  why  did  he  not  make  him 
out  of  hand  at  once  and  not  squeeze  him  up  from  a  worm? 

The  same  query  came  into  the  mind  of  the  geologist  as  he 
studied  the  fossil  species  imbedded  in  the  rocks  of  the  earth. 
These  species  were  related  to  existing  species  through  slight 
variations  in  form ;  an  extinct  species  could  thus  easily  be  traced 
onward  to  its  living  representative. 

Louis  Agassiz, — to  the  day  of  his  death,  a  profound  and 
pious  believer  in  the  creationist  theory, — ascribed  these  corres1- 
pondences  in  the  forms  of  extinct  and  living  species  to  an  archi- 
typal  plan  in  the  mind  of  the  Creator.  But  other  minds  were  not 
so  easily  satisfied.  The  speculations  of  Lamark,  the  observa- 
tion of  Erasmus  Darwin  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  the  work 
of  Cuvier  and  others  in  the  province  of  comparative  anatomy, 
and  of  Linnaeus  in  the  field  of  botany,  prepared  the  mind  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century  for  the  profound  genalization  of  Dar- 
win and  Wallace  and  for  the  ready  acceptance  of  their  theory 
of  the  origin  of  species. 

The  word  "evolution"  was  used  to  express  the  process  by 
means  of  which  the  various  existing  species  are  derived  from 
preexistent  forms.  According  to  this  theory,  the  resemblance 
between  existing  and  preexisting  species  is  not  accidental  but  or- 
ganic; it  is  not  the  work  of  a  builder  building  a  succession  of 
structures  according  to  slightly  modified  plans,  it  is  the  work 
of  a  living  organism  adapting  its_elf  by  successive  changes  to 
new  conditions  of  exisfeScI^  According  to" this  theory,  man 


330        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

is  not  a  creation,  he  is  a  growth.  Little  by  little,  by  painful 
steps  and  slow,  man  has  developed  from  the  worm  to  the  human. 

The  amazing  life  history  of  each  individual  is  but  a  repe- 
tition of  the  life  history  of  the  race.  Each1  man  begins  at  the 
beginning  and  passes  through  the  various  stages  of  ancestral 
experiences;  the  worm  is  man's  poor  relation,  and  the  monkey 
his  cousin  a  million  times  removed. 

No  revolution  in  human  thinking  equals  in  rapidity  and 
completeness  the  change  from  the  creationist  to  the  evolu- 
tionary theory  of  the  origin  of  species.  In  1850  the  whole 
Western  world,  scientific  and  theological,  was  creationist; 
in  1882,  when  Charles  Darwin  died,  the  whole  Western  world, 
scientific  and  theological,  was  evolutionist.  The  times  were  ripe 
for  the  change,  and  the  change  came.  For  a  moment  the 
theologian  sputtered  his  protest,  but  his  sputterings  were 
only  the  dying  gasp  of  a  lost  cause;  and  Charles  Darwin,  who 
had  incidentally  but  effectually  undermined  the  foundations 
of  the  theological  system,  was  buried  with  all  honors  in  the 
Christian  church  of  Westminster. 

The  reason  of  this  easy  victory  of  the  scientific  over  the 
theological  conception  of  the  origin  of  the  human  species 
was  that  the  theological  conception  had  long  before  lost  its 
hold  on  living  thought.  ^Adam,  who  for  so  many  centuries 

*  had   borne   the  blame  of   human   sin,   had   slowly   faded   away 
:  into  an  innocent  myth,  and  with  him  had  gone  the  whole  doc- 
'  trine  of  the  fall  of  man,  with  all  its  complications  and  impli- 
cations.    Just  as  the  Ptolemaic  theory  of  the  solar  and  stellar 

•universe   was    displaced   by   the    Copernican    so   the   theological 

•  theory  of  the  creation,   the   fall   and   redemption  of  man,   has 
been    removed    to    give    room    to    the    evolutionary    theory    of 
Darwin,   which   is   now,   in   its    fundamental   principle,   the   ac- 
cepted theory  of   the   thinking  world. 

It  is  too  soon  in  the  history  of  the  evolutionary  move- 
ment to  appreciate  to  the  full  its  effect  upon  existing  be- 
liefs and  institutions;  it  will  take  at  least  another  generation 
for  this  now  universally  accepted  doctrine  to  work  itself  out 
to  its  logical  conclusion  in  the  minds  of  the  mass  of  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  331 

peoplef  Deep-rooted  beliefs  die  hard;  men  go  on  by  mere 
vis  inertiae,  believing  they  believe  long  after  they  have 
ceased  to  believe.  In  relation  to  the  doctrine  of  the  fall 
and  redemption  of  man,  the  formal  religious  world  is  now 
in  the  stage  of  believing  that  it  believes;  the  old  words  are 
used,  the  old  forms  observed,  but  the  vigor  of  life  has  gone 
out  of  word  and  form.  It  is  .only  by  effort  that  the  be-- 
lief  in  the  belief  is  maintained./ 

When  a  man  is  in  his  cEurch  he  may  say  that  he  believes 
the  archaic  form  of  words, — the  dim  religious  light  hides 
from  him  his  own  infidelity;  but  when  he  comes  out  in  the 
open  light  of  day  and  buffets  with  the  actual  facts  of  life,  his 
belief  is  not  strong  enough  either  to  guide  his  thought  or  con- 
trol his  action.  Belief  held  under  such  precarious  tenure  soon 
fades  away,  and  the  mind  finds  its  rest  in  a  more  stable  con- 
ception. 

Among  the  books  that  I,  when  a  theological  student,  was 
required  to  master  was  Bishop  Bull's  Treatise  on  "Man  Before 
the  Fall."  From  that  profound  and  learned  work  I  gathered 
that  before  the  disaster  in  the  Garden  of  Eden  man  was  en- 
dowed with  every  perfection, — physical,  intellectual,  and  mor- 
al. Erect,  noble,  good,  he  stood  fearless  in  the  presence  of  his 
God.  But,  alas !  beguiled  by  a  woman,  deceived  by  a  ser- 
pent, this  perfect  being  lost  in  a  moment  all  his  perfections. 
How  such  a  wise  being  could  be  such  a  fool  was  a  question 
that  used  often  to  trouble  my  mythological  understanding. 
But,  as  everybody  believed  it,  I  believed  it;  and  I  let  it  go 
at  that.  I  now  see  what  every  one  else  sees :  that  this  story 
is  not  only  untrue  to  fact, — it  is  absurd. 

What  we  call  the  evil  in  man's  life  is  not  the  consequence 
of  man's  fall,  it  is  the  result  of  his  rise.  Man  began  not  in 
a  garden  but  in  a  jungle.  He  did  not  receive  his  human 
nature  as  a  hand-me-down,  ready-made;  he  had  to  make  it. 
The  belief  of  primitive  man  was  nearer  the  truth  than  the 
later  thought  of  the  author  of  Genesis.  Man  as  he  stands 
to-day  is  not  the  handiwork  of  a  Creator,  he  is  the  product 
of  a  process.  Urge  within  and  force  without  have  driven, 


332  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

beaten,  and  battered  him  up  from  a  trilobite  to  a  troubadour 
that   sings   his   song   in    my   lady's    chamber. 

Put  scientifically,  man  has  progressed  from  lower  to  higher 
forms  of  life  according  to  fixed  laws  and  by  means  of  resi- 
dent forces.  The  God  of  the  human  species  is  the  God 
Humanus,  moulding  and  shaping  the  life  of  man  to  higher 
<md  holier  uses. 


CHAPTER    LXVI 

J 
r        The  God  of  the  Machine 

When  in  these  days  a  wayfaring  man  wishes  to  go  from 
New  York  to  Buffalo,  he  avails  himself  of  modern  methods 
of  travel,  and  if  he  can,  makes  the  journey  by  the  Em- 
pire State  Express.  He  leaves  New  York  at  8:30  in  the 
morning,  and  arrives  in  Buffalo  at  5  130  in  the  afternoon.  The 
distance  traversed  is  four  hundred  and  fifty  miles.  The  time 
occupied  in  transit  is  nine  hours.  The  economic  cost  of  the 
journey  is  expressed  in  the  price  of  the  ticket,  which  is 
thirteen  and  a  half  dollars.  During  his  travels  the  man  has 
expended  no  vital  energy,  the  only  weariness  incident  to  his 
task  is  the  weariness  of  sitting  still. 

Had  this  same  wayfaring  man  made  his  journey  a  hun- 
dred years  ago  he  might  have  traveled  by  stage  coach ;  the 
length  of  time  occupied  in  the  journey  would  have  been  multi- 
plied by  five,  and  the  economic  cost  by  at  least  an  equal 
sum.  Had  he  made  his  way  from  the  one  point  to  the  other 
by  means  of  natural  locomotion,  his  walk  would  have  oc- 
cupied him  for  the  best  part  of  a  month,  and  the  economic 
cost  would  have  been  not  less  than  one  hundred  dollars. 
This  saving  in  time  and  money  is  the  consequence  of  the  ap- 
plication of  the  forces  of  nature  to  human  locomotion.  We  no 
longer  use  our  own  inherent  locomotive  power.  In  our  day 
we  do  not  go  from  New  York  to  Buffalo,  we  are  carried  from 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  333 

the  one  place  to  the  other.  At  8:30  in  the  morning  we  place 
ourselves  in  a  long  box  on  wheels  called  a  "car," — that  car 
and  several  others  making  up  a  train, — which  is  hauled  by 
means  of  a  locomotive  engine  driven  by  the  force  of  heat,  ex- 
panding water  into  steam.  The  steam  engine,  together  with 
the  electric  engine,  are  now  the  locomotor  agency  of  all  man- 
kind. Few  of  us  do  any  walking,  except  now  and  then  for 
pleasure.  All  our  serious  journeys  are  made  by  machinery. 

The  age  in  which  we  live  is  the  age  of  the  machine.  Hu- 
man labor  has  ceased  to  be  applied  directly  to  the  supply  of 
human  needs.  Only  in  the  very  coarsest  tasks  is  the  muscle 
of  man  employed  directly  in  the  production  of  human  ne- 
cessities. The  bread  that  we  eat  and  the  clothes  that  we  wear 
are  all  machine-made.  So  perfect  has  machinery  become 
that  a  loaf  of  bread  never  touches  a  human  hand;  from 
the  time  that  the  wheat  is  ground  until  the  bread  is  placed 
on  the  table  the  whole  work  is  accomplished  by  means  of 
machinery  under  human  supervision. 

The  consequence  of  this  revolution  in  industry  has  been 
both  the  enfranchisement  and  the  enslavement  of  mankind. 
Men  have  been  set  free  from  the  necessity  of  arduous,  con-- 
stant  physical  labor  as  a  means  of  achieving  a  livelihood. 
The  back-breaking,  heart-breaking  tasks  are  now  removed 
from  the  shoulders  of  men  and  are  placed  upon  the  shoulders 
of  the  gods.  The  forces  employed  in  our  machinery  are 
the  same  that  are  working  in  that  great  machine  that  we  call 
Nature. 

The  world  in  which  we  live,  with  its  earth  and  sun  and  moon 
and  stars,  with  its  growing  trees  and  running  waters,  is  a  vast 
machine.  /{The  universe  of  nature  thinks  mechanically;  it 
reckons  in  number,  weight,  and  measure;  its  laws  are  the 
laws  of  mechanics,-'  So  perfect  is  this  mechanism  and  so  en- 
tirely are  the  xifiovements  of  the  heavenly  bodies  under  its 
regulation,  that  we  are  able  to  calculate  an  eclipse  of  the  sun 
by  the  moon  hundreds  of  years  into  the  future.  We  can  say 
with  absolute  certainty  that  in  such  a  year,  on  such  a  day,  at 


334  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

such  an  hour,  the  bulk  of  the  moon  will  come  between  the 
earth   and   the  sun. 

So  far  as  we  can  know,  the  universe  of  nature  is  without 
intelligent  purpose  and  without  moral  control.  We  cannot 
say  that  it  intends  to  do  this  or  that.  A  loom  in  our  fac- 
tories will,  by  the  forces  of  the  shuttle,  weave  a  garment  or 
kill  a  man  with  equal  indifference,  and  will  never  know  that 
it  has  done  the  one  or  the  other.  This  whole  vast  machinery 
that  presents  itself  to  our  gaze  at  night, — when  we  see  the 
Great  Bear  wheeling  above  and  below  the  horizon, — seems  nev- 
er to  rise  above  the  consciousness  of  mere  mechanical  mo- 
tion. Whatever  God  there  be  is  the  God  of^  the  machine ; 
and  he  is  (or  it  is)  the  machine  itself.  ,  We  sometimes 
speak  of  the  laws  of  nature  as  if  these  heavenly  bodies  were 
the  servants  of  some  celestial  Caesar  who  issued  his  edict  for 
their  obedience;  but  the  more  we  study  and  reflect  upon  na- 
tural phenomena,  the  more  are  we  convinced  that  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  law  of  nature  external  to  nature  itself. 
What  we, .call  the  laws  of  nature  are  the  habits,  the  customs. 
of  nature.  }  These  habits  and  customs  are  so  fixed  that  they 
are  unalterable.  They  cannot  be  abrogated  by  any  higher 
power.  They  cannot  be  disobeyed.  It  is  this  inflexibility 
of  natural  law  that  has  given  the  conscious  intelligence  of 
man  its  opportunity.  Because  the  forces  of  nature  are  con- 
stant, man  can  by  investigation  master  their  ways  of  work- 
ing and  can  adapt  them  to  his  own  uses.  All  the  laws  of 
nature  inhere  in  nature  itself.  Newton  did  not  make  the 
law  of  gravitation,  he  only  discovered  it.  Man  cannot  abate 
one  jot  or  one  tittle  from  the  least  of  these  laws;  his  only 
mode  of  using  them  is  that  of  exact  obedience.  Let  him  err 
by  a  hair's  breadth,  and  nature  will  not  follow  him  in  his 
error.  Nature  will  go  on  in  its  own  way,  heedless  of  his 
life  or  death,  and  his  slightest  miscalculation  may  be  fatal. 

These  forces  of  nature  are  not  only  constant,  they  are  in- 
exhaustible. Man  can  neither  add  to  nor  take  away  from 
either  matter  or  force.  All  man  can  do  in  the  case  of  mat- 
ter is  to  change  its  form,  and,  in  the  case  of  force,  to  change 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  335 

its  mode.  The  conservation  of  energy  was  one  of  those  dis- 
coveries in  the  natural  world  which  made  the  Nineteenth 
Century  so  famous  in  the  history  of  human  thought.  It 
was  then  ascertained  that  the  disappearance  of  force  in  one 
mode  meant  its  immediate  reappearance  in  another  mode.  Mo- 
tion when  arrested  is  transformed  into  heat.  An  iron  ball 
dropped  from  a  great  height,  when  it  strikes  the  ground,  be- 
comes so  heated  that  the  hand  has  knowledge  of  its  warmth 
on  touching  it.  The  motion  of  the  ball  as  a  whole  has,  by 
contact  with  the  earth,  been  transferred  to  the  motions  of 
molecules  within  the  ball  itself.  When  the  wave  of  light 
strikes  the  eyeball  it  is  transformed  into  the  sense  of  vision. 
Not  one  atom  of  matter  nor  one  particle  of  force  passes  out 
of  existence.  The  universe  as  a  whole  remains  unchanged 
amidst  all  these  changes.  What  was  is,  and  what  is  always 
will  be. 

Man  is  not  at  the  end,  he  is  only  at  the  beginning  of  the 
conscious  application  of  natural  force  to  human  uses.  Vast 
regions  of  nature  are  still  unexplored,  secret  forces  are  in 
existence,  and  it  only  requires  that  man  shall  continue  his 
conscious  effort  to  know  nature,  in  order  that  he  may  ac- 
quire from  nature  a  vaster  power  for  a  mightier  life.  As 
it  is,  by  this  method  he  has  enfranchised  himself  to  a  de- 
gree that  he  hardly  appreciates  as  yet. 

Professor  Simon  Patten,  in  his  "New  Basis  of  Civiliza- 
tion," expounded  the  significant  doctrine  that  by  means  of 
machinery  the  human  race  had  passed  from  a  chronic  deficit 
to  a  chronic  surplus.  Prior  to  the  use  of  machinery  man- 
kind lived  always  at  the  point  of  starvation.  The  human  race 
multiplied  rapidly;  but  because  of  a  lack  of  food  supply,  it 
perished  with  equal  rapidity,  and  the  birth-rate  had  great 
difficulty  in  keeping  ahead  of  the  death-rate.  Since  the  use 
of  machinery  for  the  provision  of  human  needs,  trie  human 
race  has  increased  with  marvelous  rapidity.  England,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  had  a  population  of 
little  more  than  ten  millions.  Its  population  now  is  up- 
wards of  forty  millions.  During  the  Nineteenth  Century  the 


336       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

American  Continent  was  populated  (largely  at  first)  by  na- 
tural increase.  Emigrants  poured  into  America  from  West- 
ern Europe,  and  the  population  in  Western  Europe  increased 
instead  of  decreasing,  as  naturally  it  ought  to  have  done.  This 
multiplication  of  the  human  race,  whether  for  good  or  evil, 
is  the  work  of  the  god  of  machine.  This  god,  tireless  in  its 
energy,  rests  not  day  nor  night  when  called  to  labor  for  those 
who  obey  his  laws  and  so  secure  his  favor.  The  human  ele- 
ment in  modern  industry  is  only  the  intelligence  of  the  hu- 
man consciousness,  guiding  the  machine  that  man  has  made,  in 
order  that  it  may  comply  with  the  laws  of  the  greater  ma- 
chine, which  is  the  product  of  nature.  One  man  at  a  ma- 
chine does  the  work  of  from  ten  to  twenty  pairs  of  hands; 
this  process  is  in  course  of  constant  improvement,  and  man's 
intelligent  mastery  of  the  secrets  of  nature  may  mean  his 
perfect  enfranchisement.  It  already  should  accomplish  the 
proper  feeding  and  clothing  and  housing  of  every  human 
being.  By  means  of  the  weapons  now  at  his  command,  man 
may  as  soon  as  he  so  desires,  make  war  on  poverty  and  abolish 
that  baleful  disease  of  human  society,  thus  making  poverty 
with  the  squalor  and  misery  that  always  follow  in  its  camp, 
as  remote  to  the  people  of  all  lands  as  the  wolves  that  once 
infested  their  forests.1 

But  while  man's  adaptation  to  his  uses  of  the  forces  of  na- 
ture has  in  it  these  possibilities  of  enfranchisement,  it  is  the 
deplorable  fact  that  up  to  this  time  the  consequence  of  his 
inventions  has  been  the  greater  enslavement  of  the  vast  mass 
of  the  people.  John  Stuart  Mill  has  said  that  it  is  doubt- 
ful if  all  the  inventions  (which  are  many)  made  in  his  time 
had  lightened  the  task  of  a  single  laborer.  One  might  go 
further  than  the  great  philosopher  and  say  that  these  inven- 
tions, so  far  from  lessening  the  toil  of  the  working  class, 
have  increased  their  burden  and  made  it  more  irksome,  more 

1  These  words  are  an  adaptation  from  the  closing  words  of  the 
speech  of  David  Lloyd  George  made  on  the  9th  of  April,  1909, 
when  he  presented  his  famous  budget  of  that  year  for  the  con- 
sideration of  the  House  of  Commons. 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  337 

degrading,  more  destructive  of  humanity  than  all  the  toil 
of  the  ages  that  preceded  the  advent  of  the  machine. 

The  god  of  the  machine,  as  we  have  seen,  is  without  moral 
sense.  He  does  his  work  irrespective  of  the  consequences  that 
it  may  have  upon  the  lives  of  those  for  whom  he  toils. 
The  taking  of  the  laborer  from  the  open  field,  of  the  handi- 
craftsman from  his  cottage  in  the  village,  and  massing  these 
in  vast  factories,  has  had  a  woeful,  depraving  effect  upon 
the  nature  of  man.  It  has  deprived  him  of  much  that  is 
essential  to  his  well-being. 

A  hundred  years  ago  the  wayfaring  man  making  his  journey 
from  New  York  to  Buffalo,  would  indeed  have  occupied  a 
month's  time,  would  have  spent  upon  the  journey  at  least 
a  hundred  dollars,  and  would  day  by  day  have  exhausted  vi- 
tal energy,  but  he  would  have  gained  more  than  he  lost. 
During  the  month  occupied  in  walking  from  the  Bay  to  the 
Lake,  he  would  have  become  familiar  with  the  wonderful 
scenery  through  which  he  passed.  He  never  would  have 
thought  of  the  fatigue  of  his  journey,  because  of  its  ab- 
sorbing interest.  Every  moment  would  have  been  a  mo- 
ment of  delight.  The  seeing  eye  and  the  hearing  ear  would 
have  been  charmed  by  color  and  music;  the  varying  land- 
scape would  have  led  him  on  and  on;  as  a  consequence  of 
his  journey,  he  would  have  had  an  expanded  mind;  and  un- 
less he  were  a  dumb  fool  he  would  at  its  end  have  been  a 
better  and  a  greater  man.  His  muscular  nature,  too,  as  well 
as  his  intelligence,  would  have  been  vastly  benefitted  by  the 
exercise. 

Nature  made  man  a  walking  animal,  and  by  walking  man 
assumes  that  form  of  activity  that  is  most  requisite  to  keep 
him  in  perfect  health.  A  man  who  walks  ten  miles  a  day  in 
the  open  need  not  fear  old  age.  If  he  have  simple  food  to 
eat  and  water  to  drink  he  can  laugh  to  scorn  the  Psalmist's 
three  score  years  and  ten.  (JThe  whole  tendency  of  the  use 
of  machinery  for  purposes  of  locomotion  is  to  dwarf  the  in>- 
telligence,  to  deaden  the  emotion,  and  to  weaken  the  muscles. 
The  man  under  these  circumstances  is  the  slave  of  the  ma- 


338  THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

chine,  and  if  that  slavery  continues  long  enough,  the  victim 
loses  all  power  of  freedom,  he  can  no  longer  walk,  he  must 
be  carried,  and  mankind  at  large  is  rapidly  nearing  that  de- 
plorable condition.  Walking  is  becoming  a  lost  art,  and  the 
man  who  walks  is  notable  among  his  fellows. 

Not  only  have  we  machines  to  walk  for  us  but  we  also 
have  machines  to  think  for  us,  to  write  for  us,  to  sing  for 
us,  and  there  is  little  left  of  human  endeavor  to-day,  be- 
cause of  the  omnipotence,  omniscience,  and  omnipresence  of 
the  god  of  the  machine.  At  the  present  moment,  while  I  am 
dictating  these  words  to  a  machine,  the  whole  world  is  en- 
gaged in  a  war  the  most  destructive  of  life  and  property  that 
the  world  has  ever  seen.  The  armies  of  this  war  are  numbered 
by  the  million,  the  battle  fronts  extend  for  hundreds  of  miles, 
and  the  battles  last  not  for  days,  but  for  months  and  almost 
for  years.  For  nearly  three  years  now  there  has  been  a  con- 
tinuous battle  between  the  Germanic  and  Allied  armies  along 
the  Western  front  of  the  war.  This  war  is  made  possible  sim- 
ply and  solely  because  it  is  not  primarily  a  war  between  men 
and  men,  but  a  war  between  machines.  All  the  ancient  pride, 
pomp,  and  circumstance  of  war  is  gone.  The  Knight  no  longer 
rides  at  arms;  no  more  does  the  soldier  follow  the  colors;  no 
more  does  the  bugle  blow;  but  dull  gray  men  in  dull  gray 
ditches  handle  vast  machines,  project  explosive  gases,  and  rush 
in  desperation  from  one  trench  to  another,  perishing  by  the 
thousand  where  aforetime  scarcely  a  score  had  died.  Unless 
the  intelligence  of  man  can  devise  some  method  whereby 
to  check  the  devastating  power  of  the  war  machine,  the  end 
of  the  human  race  is  in  sight.  Instead  of  man  mastering 
the  machine,  the  machine  is  mastering  man  and  working  his 
destruction.1 

There  is  a  constant  tendency  in  the  universe  toward  the 
machine.  Human  organizations  are  subject  to  this  tendency. 
;In  politics  and  in  religion  we  have  the  machine, — an  or- 
ganization that  works  almost  automatically  in  its  own  in- 

'These  words  were  dictated  to  a  machine  on  the  30th  of  June, 
1917,  when  the  news  had  just  arrived  of  the  landing  of  American 
armies  in  France. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  339 

terest,    without    intelligence,    and    without    moral    sense.      The 
great  nations  of  the  world  are  little  else  than  machines.  Their 
act    in    contradiction    to    the    intelligence    and    the    conscience. 
And   the  same  is   true   of   the   religious   organizations    now    in 
existence.      The   greatest   of   all    these    religious    organizations, 
the    Catholic    Church,    is    to-day    little    else    than    a    worn-out 
machine.     It  has  lost  all  power  of  intelligent  adaptation  or 
moral   cooperation  with   the  existing  world.     Men   in   every  \ 
country  where  it  has  been  dominant,  as  in  Mexico,  in  Italy,  ; 
and   elsewhere,   are   scrapping  it  as   useless. 

The  various  Protestant  denominations  are  likewise  machines. 
They  do  not  think,  they  follow  custom ;  and  to  follow  cus- 
tom is  of  the  very  essence  of  the  nature  of  the  machine.  Na- 
ture does  not  think  intellectually,  only  mechanically.  And 
just  as  soon  as  any  organization  is  perfected  it  is  a  ma- 
chinery to  be  used  so  long  as  it  is  useful,  and  then  to  be 
cast  aside.  (  The  great  problem  of  the  immediate  future  is 
to  bring  the  ^god  of  the_  machine  under  the  dominion  of  the 
god  of  the  moral  order.  Man  must  not  be  mastered  by  the 
machine;  he  must,  by  his  intelligence  and  his  moral  appre- 
hension, command  his  tool. 


CHAPTER  LXVII 
The  God  of  the  Market 

By  one  of  those  curious  transformations  so  common  in  re- 
ligious history,  Jesus  the  son  of  Joseph,  called  the  Christ,  who 
was  the  god  of  the  catacombs,  worshipped  by  the  slaves,  the 
beggars,  the  thieves,  the  harlots  of  ancient  Rome,  as  their 
Lord  and  Saviour, — has  become  in  our  day  the  God  of  the 
Market.  Evangelical  Christianity  is  that  form  of  religion 
most  patronized  by  the  business  man.  If  it  were  not  for 
this  class  Evangelical  Christianity  could  not  survive  for  a 


340        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

day.  It  is  the  commercial  element  that  builds  and  maintains 
its  churches,  employs  its  ministers,  sends  its  missionaries  to 
every  land  to  preach  the  unsearchable  riches  of  Christ.  One 
of  the  greatest,  if  not  the  greatest,  financier  of  modern  times 
began  his  will,  dispensing  his  immense  fortune,  with  the  di- 
rection that  his  heirs  should  employ  their  lives  and  his  wealth 
for  the  maintenance  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ  in  the  world. 

The  first  billionaire  in  history,  a  man  of  business  genius 
unequaled  in  any  age,  is  a  most  devout  believer  in  and  earn- 
est supporter  of  the  Baptist  form  of  faith.  The  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association,  with  all  its  vast  equipment  and  means 
of  usefulness,  is  the  foundation  of  the  merchant  class,  and  is 
used  by  them  for  the  furtherance  of  that  form  of  religion 
which  they  patronize.  No  man  can  be  a  voter  in  that  As- 
sociation who  is  not  a  professed  member  of  some  Evangelical 
body. 

This  dominance  of  the  business  element  is  seen  in  all  the 
workings  of  the  Evangelical  churches.  They  are  on  a  busi- 
ness basis ;  pews  in  the  houses  of  worship  are  rented  and 
sold  on  the  same  principle  as  stalls  in  the  market,  the  better 
place  bringing  the  higher  price.  The  clergy  in  these  churches 
are  ranged  as  fifteen-thousand,  ten-thousand,  five- thousand,  one- 
thousand-dollar  men  and  under,  and  each  man's  ecclesiastical 
importance  is  measured  by  the  amount  of  his  ecclesiastical 
income :  The  principle  of  competition  rules  in  the  religious  as 
it  does  in  the  business  world.  The  ministers  are  in  competition 
all  the  time  for  the  better  churches  and  the  higher  salaries. 
A  church  in  need  of  a  pastor  bids  for  him  in  the  market  just 
as  the  merchant  in  need  of  a  clerk  bids  for5  him  in  the  market. 
Money  is  the  measure  of  success  in  the  church  as  it  is  in  the 
world.  A  minister  who  can  draw  an  audience  and  secure 
from  that  audience  liberal  contributions  is  sure  of  promotion ; 
the  highest  places  in  the  church  are  within  his  reach.  In 
every  respect  the  church  and  the  world  are  alike, — both  have 
been  commercialized  by  the  commercial  class. 

Jesus  the  Christ  is  the  central  Divinity  in  this  scheme  of 
worship.  God  the  Father  is  remote  to  the  thought  of  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  341 

Evangelical.  He  is  a  God  who  sits  aloft  creating  and  judg- 
ing mankind,  but  having  no  intimate  relation  with  the  life  of 
the  people.  All  the  hymns  in  these  churches  that  are  popu- 
lar with  the  people  are  hymns  addressed  to  Jesus.  "Jesus 
saviour  of  my  Soul,"  is  in  the  heart  and  on  the  lips  of  every 
devout  evangelical  Christian.  To  Jesus  is  ascribed  the  most 
important  of  all  divine  functions,  that  of  saving  the  people 
from  their  sins  and  conferring  upon  them  the  gift  of  Eternal 
Life. 

When  we  analyze  the  foundations  of  evangelical  belief,  we 
get  a  clue  to  this  strange  situation.  At  first  we  are  perplexed 
to  an  extreme  to  understand  how  it  has  come  to  pass  that  the 
Jesus  of  whom  we  read  in  the  Gospels,  whose  whole  life  and 
teaching  was  a  continual  protest  against  every  principle  of 
commercialism,  has  come  to  be  the  god  of  commerce.  Ac- 
cumulation is  the  fundamental  postulate  of  the  commercial 
creed.  To  lay  by  in  store  is  taught  as  the  virtue  of  virtues. 
A  man  without  a  surplus  capital  has  no  standing  in  the  market ; 
and  yet  Jesus  condemns  all  accumulation  as  faithlessness  in 
Divine  Providence.  Accumulation  in  his  sight  is  a  sin; 
"Lay  not  up  for  yourselves  treasures  upon  earth."  Not  only 
is  it  a  sin,  it  is  folly.  Jesus  would  Jhave  men  to  be  as  the 
flowers  of  the  field,  and  the  birds  of  the  air,  dependent  upon 
the  daily  ministrations  of  nature  for  their  daily  bread.  His 
prayer  for  bread  is  limited  for  the  day, — it  knows  no  to- 
morrow. When  he  was  alive  here  in  the  earth  (if  we  may 
believe  what  is  told  of  him)  his  anger  was  fierce  against 
those  who  "devour  widows'  houses  and  who  for  a  pretence 
make  long  prayers." 

The  explanation  of  this  patronage  of  Jesus  by  the  mer- 
chants is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  Jesus  of  the  Mar- 
ket is  not  the  Jesus  of  the  Gospel.  He  is  the  Christ  of 
the  Evangelical  creed,  and  the  Christ  of  the  Evangelical 
creed  is  the  center  of  religious  exchanges.  The  Evangelical 
has  made  with  the  Christ  of  the  creed  a  bargain  similar  to 
that  made  by  Jacob  with  Jehovah.  He  says  to  his  God 
Jesus,  as  he  calls  him:  "If  thou  wilt  be  with  me  in  the  way 


342  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

that  I  go  and  bring  me  to  my  father's  house  in  peace,  if 
thou  wilt  secure  for  me  the  forgiveness  of  my  sins  and  the 
blessings  of  eternal  life,  then  thou  shalt  be  my  God  and  of 
all  that  thou  givest  me  I  will  give  thee  the  tenth." 

The  Evangelical  faith  is  in  this  respect  Hebraistic.  The 
relation  of  the  worshipper  to  his  God  is  not  organic,  it  is 
contractual.  It  is  the  religion  of  the  covenant, — so  much  for 
so  much, — and  it  is  to  be  said  for  the  evangelical  that  he  is 
true  to  his  bargain.  Trusting  to  Jesus  for  the  fulfillment  of 
his  part  of  the  contract,  his  worshipper  gives  freely  of  his 
wealth,  even  to  the  tenth,  to  promote  the  preaching  of  Jesus 
as  the  Christ  in  the  world,  and  to  sustain  his  worship.  Mil- 
lions are  poured  out  every  year  in  this  religious  enterprise. 
Evangelical  ministers  and  missionaries  penetrate  to  every 
portion  of  the  earth,  and  their  source  of  supply  is  the  wealth 
accumulated  in  the  market. 

If  Jesus  were  as  a  man,  with  the  feelings  common  to 
man,  he  might  well  be  proud  of  his  present  preeminence. 
His  promotion  from  the  godship  of  the  beggar  to  the  god- 
ship  of  the  merchant  prince  might  well  seem  to  him  an  as- 
surance of  his  success  in  the  universe.  He  no  longer  is 
poorer  than  the  bird  of  the  air  and  the  fox  in  the  thicket, 
having  no  place  to  lay  his  head ;  he  is  housed  magnificently  in 
palaces  on  the  wealthiest  thoroughfares  in  the  wealthiest  cities 
in  the  world.  It  is  not  the  men  and  the  women,  who  out  of  the 
simplicity  of  their  hearts  know  no  better  that  sing  his  praises 
in  rude  form  as  they  march  in  and  out  through  the  catacombs, 
but  the  most  highly  trained  voices,  the  most  expensive  musi- 
cal instruments  are  employed  in  his  divine  worship.  He  does 
not  have  to  hide  his  head  for  fear;  he  can  show  himself 
openly  in  the  seats  of  the  elders,  and  he  is  welcome  to  the 
highest  place  in  the  synagogue.  He  is  to-day  no  less  a  per- 
son than  the  God  of  the  Market;  and  to-day  the  market  rules 
the  world. 

The  market  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  contrivances  de- 
vised by  the  wisdom  of  man  for  the  accomplishment  of  his 
well-being  in  the  earth.  Before  the  day  of  the  market  each 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  343 

man  had  to  provide  as  best  he  could  his  whole  means  of  liveli- 
hood. He  had  to  dig  with  his  own  fingers  the  roots  that  he 
ate,  and  catch  with  his  own  hand  the  prey  that  he  devoured; 
he  had  to  skin  the  beasts  and  cure  the  hides  to  cover  his 
nakedness;  he  had  to  build  for  himself  the  hut  that  shel- 
tered him,  or  find  refuge  in  a  cave  of  the  earth.  By  means 
of  the  market,  man  has  escaped  from  this  condition  of  pov- 
erty. Each  man  has  come  to  labor  not  only  for  himself 
but  for  his  fellow-man. 

Man  might  almost  be  called  a  commercial  animal.  From 
the  very  first  the  instinct  of  the  trader  has  been  manifest  in 
him, — an  instinct  that  is  found  nowhere  else  that  we  know 
of  in  all  the  universe.  The  expert  fisherman,  catching  more 
fish  than  he  needed  for  his  own  use,  exchanged  his  surplus 
with  a  skilful  hunter  or  a  patient  husbandman,  and  so  se- 
cured a  more  varied  food  supply.  We  may,  indeed,  see 
the  beginnings  of  the  market  system  in  the  pack  that  com- 
bines to  hunt  the  common  prey,  but  we  do  not  have  here 
any  exchange,  we  only  have  the  principle  of  the  common  weal 
as  the  outcome  of  the  common  labor. 

By  this  contrivance  of  the  market,  man  has  brought  about 
that  division  of  labor  which  is  the  source,  really,  of  his  wealth. 
Each  man,  each  community,  does  that  which  it  can  do  to  the 
best  advantage,  and  then  exchanges  the  surplus  of  its  product 
with  other  communities,  obeying  the  same  law  of  labor.  Wine- 
raising  countries  exchange  the  fruit  of  the  grape  for  the 
wheat  that  grows  on  the  upland.  This  system  has  become  so 
organized  that  to-day  the  market  is  coextensive  with  the 
world. 

From  the  beginning  commerce  has  been  the  builder  of  cities 
and  empires.  Tyre  and  Carthage,  Venice  and  London,  all 
owe  their  greatness  to  their  commercial  supremacy.  Each  in 
its  day  was  and  is  the  market  town  of  the  world.  Without 
the  market  it  would  not  be  possible  for  mankind  to  over- 
spread the  earth  as  he  is  doing  now.  It  is  the  accumulated 
commercial  capital  of  London  that  has  opened  up  the  prairies 
of  Canada  to  the  Englishman  and  the  pampas  of  Argentina 


344  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

to  the  Italian.  This  capital  has  delivered  millions  from  the 
slums  of  London,  Naples,  and  New  York,  and  given  them 
the  free,  open,  independent  life  of  the  country. 

When  we  consider  what  the  market  has  done  for  mankind, 
we  are  at  a  loss  at  first  to  understand  why  it  is  that  none 
of  the  greater  and  older  gods  were  ever  gods  of  the 
market.  Uranus,  as  we  have  learned,  was  the  god  of  space, 
Chronos  of  time,  Zeus  of  the  city,  Jehovah  of  the  tribe,  Jesus 
in  his  day  the  Divinity  of  the  people,  Mary  the  goddess  of 
consolation.  Not  one  of  these  but  would  have  been  insulted 
to  have  been  called  the  god  of  the  market.  To  find  com- 
mercial divinities,  we  must  descend  to  Beelzebub,  Mammon, 
Biliken,  and  Mercury,  and  of  these  the  only  one  having  any 
claim  to  respectability  is  the  last,  who  was  known  in  ancient 
mythology  as  the  god  of  thieves, — and  merchants. 

From  the  very  first  a  disgrace  has  attached  to  the  mar- 
ket. The  word  trader  and  traitor  are  derived  from  the  same 
root.  Even  to  our  own  day  it  was  a  shame  for  an  English- 
man to  be  a  tradesman;  such  a  man  had  to  take  off  his  hat 
and  stand  humbly  in  the  presence  of  his  superiors.  Here 
again  we  are  at  a  loss  at  first  for  a  reason  that  will  ade- 
quately account  for  the  phenomenon. 

,/The  disrepute  of  the  market  lies  in  the  motive  of  the 
market.  The  primary  purpose  of  a  mercantile  transaction 
is  nojt  human  service  but  iCoouaercial  gain.  Profit  is  of  the  es- 
sence of  mercantile  life^The  capitalist  who  lends  his  money 
in  London  does  not  d&'so  primarily  for  the  purpose  of  open- 
ing up  new  countries  and  benefitting  contracted  lives;  his 
act  is  not  one  of  beneficence  but  of  business.  He  puts  his 
money  out  at  interest,  and  it  is  what  his  money  earns  for 
him,  not  what  his  money  does  in  and  of  itself,  that  concerns 
him.  He  will  lend  it  as  readily  to  destroy  and  enslave  a  people 
as  he  will  to  promote  their  well-being.  The  market  buys 
and  sells  whatever  is  in  demand:  wheat,  coal,  iron,  a  child's 
life,  a  woman's  virtue,  are  all  put  up  in  the  market  indif- 
ferently for  the  price  they  will  bring.  The  God  of  the  Mar- 
ket, like  the  God  of  the  Machine,  has  neither  higher  intelli- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  345 

gence  nor  moral  sense;  his  intelligence  being  the  intelligence 
of  the  market,  and  his  morality  the  morality  of  the  market. 
The  merchant  who  fails  to  meet  his  engagements  is  con- 
demned; the  merchant  who  is  smart  and  overreaches  and  gets 
the  best  of  the  bargain  is  commended.  The  ruin  of  a  rival 
is  the  crowning  glory  of  the  man  of  the  market.  In  its  own 
vernacular,  one  man  "does"  another,  and  the  man  who  "does" 
is  acclaimed  for  his  business  ability. 

The  market  corrupts  religion,  depraves  literature,  and  d&- 
bases  art.  The  teacher,  the  preacher,  the  artist,  is  employed 
by  the  merchant  class  to  preach  commercialism  as  the  high- 
est, best,  noblest  way  of  living.  The  preacher  and  the 
teacher  must  not  speak  as  they  think,  but  they  must  express 
the  thought  of  the  market.  The  artist  must  portray  not  the 
miseries  of  the  poor,  but  the  gorgeous  well-being  of  the 
rich.  He  must  paint  their  divinities  in  the  likeness  of  his 
patron.  During  the  Renaissance  the  artists  were  in  the  em- 
ploy of  the  great  commercial  cities,  the  merchants  them7 
selves  for  the  most  part  being  the  patrons.  The  Popes  who 
made  a  trade  of  their  religion  in  that  age,  vied  with-  the 
merchant  in  securing  the  services  of  the  great  geniuses  of 
the  age.  I  cannot  recall  any  picture  of  poverty  (as  it  ex- 
isted at  that  time  in  those  centers  of  life)  on  the  canvas  of 
any  great  artist.  The  models  for  the  Madonnas  of  Ra- 
phael are  the  women  of  the  leisure  class,  and  all  the  figures 
that  surround  this  central  divinity,  to  whose  glory  he  devoted 
his  genius,  are  the  wealthy  men  of  the  time, — the  men  who 
paid  him  to  paint  the  picture.  It  would  have  been  well  for 
the  world  if  Raphael  could  have  given  us  at  least  one  pic- 
ture of  one  leper,  of  whom  there  were  a  multitude  at  that 
time  in  the  highways  and  byways  of  Italy.  All  the  squalor, 
ail  the  misery,  of  the  period  goes  unrecorded,  and  we  have 
perpetual  Madonnas  repeated  perpetually  for  the  glorification 
of  the  wealthy  and  the  leisure  class. 

In  our  own  day  our  merchants  are  eager  to  possess  the 
paintings  of  these  old  masters;  but  not  one  of  them  employs 
an  artist  to  go  down  into  the  highways  and  byways  of  life 


346  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

as  it  is  in  the  modern  world  and  picture  it  as  they  see  it. 
Once  in  a  while  a  great  master  does  this  of  his  own  ac- 
cord, and  his  paintings  hang  unsold  upon  the  walls  of  hi? 
own  studio.  They  have  no  market  price.  The  commercial 
world  knows  of  nothing  but  commercial  values. 

I  heard  a  celebrated  business  man  (an  advertiser,  by  the. 
way,  and  a  brilliant  speaker)  say  to  an  audience  that  money 
is  the  measure  of  ability  and  success;  that  a  man  who  had 
ability  could  use  it  in  the  commercial  world  to  secure  for 
himself  the  rewards  of  that  world  and  amass  a  fortune.  And 
no  one  questioned  the  assertion,  for  it  is  a  truism  in  the 
market.  Therefore,  according  to  this  principle,  the  courtesan 
who  sells  her  favors  to  the  highest  bidder  is  a  woman  of 
greater  ability  than  the  virtuous  housewife  who  labors  early 
and  late  in  the  interests  of  her  household.  The  prophet  who 
prophecies  smooth  things,  and  in  consequence  draws  his 
salary  of  fifteen  to  twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year,  is  an 
abler  man  than  a  rugged  and  rude  John  who  preaches  in 
the  wilderness,  living  on  locust  and  wild  honey. 

It  is  the  profit  system  that  makes  the  market  what  it  is, — 
a  disgrace  to  humanity.  Every  great  commercial  center  has 
always  been  a  center  of  social  corruption.  Tyre  sold  a 
boy  for  a  harlot  and  traded  the  virtue  of  a  woman  for  a 
gem.  England  has  depraved  its  working  class  in  the  in- 
terests of  its  commercial  prosperity.  New  York  is  more 
noted  for  its  Great  White  Way  than  it  is  for  its  many 
noble  charities.  Its  Great  White  Way  is  the  natural  product 
of  its  commercialism,  while  its  institutions  of  charity  are  the 
outcome  of  an  effort/to  stay  some  of  the  greater  evils  of  the 
commercial  systeru'/It  is  the  market  that  is  the  efficient  cause 
of  that  deadly  disease  poverty  that  has  afflicted  mankind  since 
the  beginning  of  his  social  life  on  the  earth,  and  unless  the 
market  can  be  regulated  and  its  greater  abuses  abated,  it  will 
destroy  present  civilization,  as  it  has  destroyed  ancient  civiliz- 
ations. /London  is  to-day  in  its  death-throes  because  of  the 
terrific  "abuses  that  have  been  permitted  to  prevail  in  the 
business  life  of  the  nation.  If  England  is  to  recover,  it  can 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  347 

only  be  by  the  stern  elimination  of  the  practices  hitherto 
permitted,  whereby  one  man  and  one  class  has  been  allowed 
to  exploit  another  man  and  another  class  in  its  own  interests. 
The  landlord,  the  money  monger,  must  be  brought  under 
the  influence  of  a  higher  law  than  that  of  the  market. 

Behind  the  market  is  the  great  army  of  producers  who  are 
compelled  to  bring  their  product  to  the  market,  there  to  sell 
it  at  the  market  price.  It  is  to  the  interests  of  the  merchant 
to  buy  at  the  lowest  possible  price.  He  takes  advantage  of 
every  glut,  to  secure  the  product  at  a  sum  that  may  be 
ruinous  to  the  producer.  In  front  of  the  market  is  the 
consumer  who  must  buy  at  the  market  price;  and  here  again 
the  self-interest  of  the  market  man  leads  him  to  put  upon  the 
product  the  highest  price  that  the  business  will  bear.  He  has 
no  consideration  whatever  for  the  necessities  of  the  purchaser; 
for  all  he  cares,  the  consumer  may  starve  and  freeze;  he 
will  have  his  price.  It  is  this  man  between  who  has  through'- 
out  history  absorbed  a  vastly  undue  share  of  the  common 
wealth.  He  has  been  the  merchant  prince,  living  in  luxury, 
clothing  his  wife  and  daughters  in  costly  apparel,  adorning 
them  with  jewels,  turning  human  labor  into  channels  for  his 
own  aggrandizement,  and  all  the  while,  within  his  sight, 
great  masses  of  people  have  been  starving  for  the  necessi- 
ties of  life.  The  God  of  the  Market  is  like  the  God  of 
the  Machine,  without  pity,  without  morality.  He  will  have 
his  pound  of  flesh  no  matter  what  may  happen  to  Antonio. 

The  only  salvation  for  mankind  is  the  substitution  of  the 
community  itself  for  the  middleman.  The  market  cannot  with 
safety  be  left  any  longer  in  private  control.  The  producer  and 
the  consumer  must  combine  to  secure  to  themselves  the 
values  that  are  properly  theirs.  The  market  has  become  so 
vast  in  its  operations, — each  man  is  so  entirely  dependent 
upon  it, — that  it  has  become  in  private  hands  a  despotism, 
destructive  of  all  liberty.  For  a  bare  livelihood  the  great 
mass  of  mankind  to-day  must  cringe  and  fawn  before  those 
who  are  in  possession  of  the  sources  of  wealth  and  means  of 
distribution ;  for  the  market  owns  the  one  and  controls  the 
other. 


348       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

The  revolution  now  impending  is  not  a  political  but  an 
industrial  revolution.  It  is  the  redemption  of  the  market 
from  under  bondage  to  the  merchant  class.  The  merchant 
must  no  longer  be  the  master  but  the  servant  of  the  seller. 
(and  the  buyer. 

The  principles  of  Jesus  the  Son  of  Joseph,  if  applied  to  the 
market,  would  heal  its  sickness.  He  makes  the  basic  prin- 
'  ciple  of  the  market  to  be  not  profit  but  service.  The  mer- 
chant holds  the  same  place  in  the  economic  world  as  that 
held  by  the  minister  in  the  spiritual  world.  He  is  to  dis- 
tribute to  the  people  the  goods  committed  to  his  care. 
This  task  of  distribution  has  its  payment  not  in  a  profit  but 
\in  a  wage.  The  man  is  not  to  buy  and  sell  with  a  view 
to  his  own  enrichment,  but  is  to  have  constantly  in  mind 
the  necessities  of  the  people.  This  conception  of  the  market 
is  so  foreign  to  the  present  mind  that  it  is  absurd;  but, 
nevertheless,  it  is  the  true  conception.  Jesus  forbids  the 
accumulation  of  riches;  nor  does  he  do  so  as  a  mere  vision- 
ary, ignorant  of  the  world  in  which  he  lives,  but  because 
with  his  prophetic  insight  he  saw  that  if  the  market  were 
properly  managed,  if  the  industrial  products  of  the  world 
were  properly  distributed,  there  would  be  no  necessity 
for  such  accumulation.  The  great  mass  of  the  people  depen- 
dent on  the  market  are  unable  to  accumulate.  Each  day's 
wage  purchases  each  day's  supplies,  and  these  live  as  do 
the  fowl  of  the  air  and  the  flower  of  the  field.  Only  the  few 
contravene  this  law  of  daily  providence,  and  endeavor 
to  forestall  the  market  and  secure  for  themselves  and  their 
households  an  abundance  of  goods  sufficient  not  only  for  the 
day  but  as  far  as  possible  for  all  time.  It  is  this  false 
conception  of  the  market  that  is  the  fruitful  source  of  the 
major  evils  of  our  time.  Because  of  this  we  have  the 
miseries  of  the  poor  and  the  debaucheries  of  the  rich;  we 
have  the  degradation  of  the  menial  and  the  insolence  of  the 
master. 

If  Jesus  is  to  come  to  his  own  as  the  God  of  the  Market, 
then  his  ministers  must  preach  in  season  and  out  of  season 
his  economic  doctrine.  They  must  lay  stress  continually  on 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  349 

the  sin  of  covetousness  as  the  great  idolatry,  —  as  the  final 
denial  of  God.  Until  this  is  done,  the  present  fantastic  form 
of  homage  will  continue,  and  we  shall  see  the  worship  of 
Christ  degraded  to  the  level  of  the  worship  of  Biliken.  /The 
redemption,  however,  is  at  hand,  and  the  God  of  the.  .-Market 
as  well  as  the  Godjjf^the  Machine  is  coming  undler  the  domin- 
ion of  the  God  Humanus,  whose  legend  is  not  "Get!"  but 


v 
i 


CHAPTER  LX'VIII 
The  God  Humanus 

Looking  down  on  the  face  of  his  dead  daughter,  a  wo- 
man of  rare  mental  and  physical  endowments,  —  who,  after 
a  long  and  painful  illness,  had  just  died  in  the  prime  of  her 
young  womanhood,  —  a  celebrated  scientist  made  answer  to 
a  friend  offering  him  conventional  words  of  religious  com- 
fort: 

"I  find  no  evidence  of  any  feeling  of  compassion  in  the 
universe  outside  the  nature  of  man.  If  a  man  is  to  be  com- 
forted in  his  sorrow,  he  must  find  the  source  of  comfort 
in  himself." 

While  this  scientist,  in  the  extremity  of  his  grief,  may 
have  overstated  the  case,  he  did,  without  doubt,  give  words 
to  a  thought  that  lies  heavy  on  every  human  heart.  When, 
in  the  freshness  of  a  great  sorrow,  one  is  told  to  seek  com- 
fort from  God,  one  can  but  cry  with  the  Patriarch  Job  : 

"O,  that  I  knew  where  I  might  find  Him  that  I  might 
come  unto  His  seat.  Behold  I  go  forward,  he  is  not  there. 
And  backward,  but  I  cannot  perceive  Him." 

The  indifference  of  nature  .to  our  human  grief  never  fails 
to  astonish  us  —  that  the  sun  should  shine  and  the  birds  sing 
while  our  hearts  are  breaking  seems  to  us  but  in  mockery 
of  our  sorrow.  Burns  has  made  this  the  theme  of  the  sacj- 
dest  and  yet  the  loveliest  of  his  songs  ; 


350        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Ye   banks   and   braes   o'   bonnie    Doon, 

How  can  ye  bloom  sae  'fresh  and  fair; 
How    can    ye    chant,    ye    little    birds, 

And    I    sae    weary    fu'    o*    care? 
Thou'lt  break  my  heart,  thou  warbling  bird, 

That   wantons    thro"    the    flowering    thorn, 
That  minds  me   o'   departed  joys, 

Departed,  never  to  return. 

There  is  something  in  human  grief  that  seems  alien  to 
nature.  Nature  can  be  sad,  but  never  sorrowful.  Human 
sorrow  has  in  it  not  only  the  sense  of  loss  but  also  the  added 
sense  of  injustice.  It  seems  that  God  is  not  only  hard  but 
unjust  as  well.  Thinking  of  his  indifference,  we  cry  with 
Martha : 

"Lord,  if  Thou  hadst  been  here  my  brother  had  not  died." 

Thinking  of  God's  injustice  we  are  prone  to  utter  the  re- 
proach of  the  widow  of  Serepta  to  Elijah: 

"What  have  I  to  do  with  thee,  O  thou  man  of  God,  art 
thou  come  to  call  my  sins  to  remembrance  and  to  slay  my 
son?" 

The  injustice  and  cruelty  of  life  make  belief  in  the  bene- 
ficence of  God  hard  for  the  human  heart. 

The  scientist's  grief  was  not  more  for  the  loss  of  his 
daughter  than  it  was  for  his  daughter's  loss  of  the  oppor- 
tunities and  joys  of  her  womanhood.  His  grief  was  not 
selfish,  it  was  sympathetic;  and  this  sympathetic  grief  is 
purely  human.  It  is  only  man  that  follows  his  dead  into 
their  graves  and  seeks  by  his  ministrations  to  bring  some 
comfort  into  their  dark  and  lonely  abode.  It  is  only  the 
young  of  our  race  that  are  mourned  after  they  are  lost. 
The  leaves  fall  from  the  tree  and  the  tree  does  not  regard 
it;  the  youngling  drops  from  the  nest  and  is  straightway 
forgotten ;  but  human  love  goes  after  its  dead  to  the 
portals  of  the  tomb,  and  will  not  let  them  go. 

In  Rama  was  there  a  voice  heard,  lamentation  and  great  weeping, 
Rachel  weeping  for  her  children,  and  refused  to  be  comforted  because 
they  are  not. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  351 

It  can  be  safely  said  that  sympathetic  grief  can,  so  far  as 
observation  goes,  be  found  nowhere  in  the  universe  but 
in  the  heart  of  man. 

Not  only  is  nature  irresponsive  to  the  grief  of  man,  but 
it  is  also  indifferent  to  his  moralities.  It  is  a  matter  of 
no  account  to  nature  if  a  child  is  the  product  of  a  lawful 
marriage  or  an  adulterous  connection ;  when  once  a  child  is 
begotten,  nature  pursues  its  even  way,  often  giving  to  the 
love  child  more  than  it  gives  to  the  child  of  marriage. 
Nor  does  nature  intervene  to  wither  the  hand  that  holds 
the  murderous  knife, — the  knife  might  be  cutting  the  wood 
of  a  tree  rather  than  the  flesh  of  a  man  for  all  that  the 
forces  of  nature  care.  The  knife  is  sharp  and  the  arm  is 
strong,  and  the  use  it  is  put  to  does  not  concern  the  sharp- 
ness of  the  knife  nor  the  strength  of  the  arm.  Nature  as 
nature  has  no  moral  sense.  Conscience,  with  its  restrain- 
ing power,  is  an  attribute,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  of  mankind 
alone. 

There  is  yet  another  human  quality  that  has  given  man 
a  unique  place  in  the  world, — man,  far  beyond  any  other 
creature,  possesses  the  power  of  reasoning,  having  evolved 
an  intelligence  that  can  see  before  and  after.  By  the  use 
of  this  acquirement,  he  can  shape  himself  to  his  environ- 
ment and  his  environment  to  himself.  It  is  this  power  that 
has  given  man  the  mastery  of  the  earth  and  made  him  at 
home  in  every  climate.  By  the  use  of  his  particular  gift 
of  purposeful  reason,  man  has  tamed  the  strength  of  the 
horse,  has  domesticated  the  cattle  and  the  sheep,  has  of  a 
crab-apple  produced  a  pippin,  and  of  the  wild  rose  the 
American  beauty;  has  built  for  himself  houses  and  planted 
for  himself  gardens.  Man  clothes  himself  with  his  own 
thought  and  decorates  himself  with  his  own  designs.  We 
do  not  find  conscious  intelligence  so  developed  elsewhere 
as  it  is  in  man. 

Man  has  these  three  qualities, — implicit  it  may  be  in 
nature,  explicit  only  in  himself:  the  power  of  sympathy; 
the  sense  of  right;  the  gift  of  self-direction.  Because  man 
has  these  three  peculiar  possessions,  he  is  what  he  is, — 


352       THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

a  sensitive,  moral,  reasonable  being.  And  as  these  are 
more  or  less  highly  developed,  so  does  a  man  live  on  a 
higher  or  lower  plane  of  existence,  so  is  he  either  a  thing 
or  a  person.  A  man  of  cold  temperament,  feeble  of  con- 
science and  of  undeveloped  intelligence,  has  not  yet  at- 
tained to  his  humanity;  his  life  is  not  yet  conscious,  but 
drags  along  in  the  unconscious  mire  of  natural  force. 

John  Fiske  has  told  us  that  human  progress  was  con- 
tingent on  the  length  of  human  infancy.  The  love  of  the 
mother  for  the  child  was  engendered  not  only  by  the  in- 
timate connection  of  the  womb  and  the  breast  but  by  the 
force  of  habit.  Mother  care,  which  is  the  source  of  mother 
love,  was  exercised  not  merely  for  weeks  and  months  but 
for  years,  until  by  wont  it  became  of  the  very  nature  of 
the  mother  life,  and  from  the  mother  passed  into  the 
possession  of  the  race. 

This  growth  of  sympathy  created  the  human  institutions 
of  the  tribe, — the  family  and  the  state.  By  means  of  these 
organizations  man  sought  to  secure  for  his  young  shelter 
against  the  ills  of  life.  Sympathy  when  thus  developed 
went  out  not  only  to  one  but  to  all  the  children,  so  that 
childhood  as  such  was  protected  by  the  common  love. 
The  mother  cared  most  for  her  own  child;  but  the  n'other- 
hood  in  her  embraced  not  only  a  child,  but  childhood. 
Witness  the  fondness  of  the  girl  for  the  doll. 

The  extension  of  the  area  of  sympathetic  love  has  marked 
the  progress  of  humanity  from  the  wild  to  the  civilized 
state.  Beginning  with  the  mother  and  the  child,  it  in- 
cluded within  the  circle  of  its  warmth  the  members  of  the 
family,  of  the  community,  of  the  state,  and  of  the  race.  Man 
has  at  last  reached  the  sympathetic  stage  of  development  in 
which  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  witness  the  distress  of  any 
fellow-creature  without  a  spasm  of  sympathy.  When  one 
can  look  on  suffering  in  any  form  with  utter  indifference 
one  has  in  so  far  ceased  to  be  human. 

It  was  the  exercise  of  sympathy  that  gave  rise  to  the 
moral  sense.  The  wilful  infliction  of  pain  was  resented 
as  monstrous;  he  who  could  torture  a  child  was  not  a  man 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  353 

but  a  brute,  whose  actions  called  for  condemnation  in  the 
interests  of  the  social  order.  Since  frail  children  cannot 
live  in  a  world  of  unrestrained  unkindness,  men  came  to 
think  of  unkindness  in  terms  of  morality:  an  unkind  act 
was  not  only  painful  to  its  object,  it  was  wrong  in  its  agent ; 
as  the  word  implies,  it  was  destructive  of  kin.  Conscious 
unkindness  made  family,  community  and  state  impossible; 
because  all  these  institutions  are  disrupted  and  dissolved 
by  continued  cruelty.  So  the  cruel  man,  the  murderer, 
the  robber,  the  adulterer  (who  respectively  indulged  his 
hate,  his  greed,  his  lust  at  the  cost  of  pain  to  his  victims) 
was  called  a  bad  man,  and  as  such  was  subject  to  the  loss 
of  his  own  life,  his  own  property,  his  own  wife  and  chil- 
dren. The  moral  sense  in  man  has  its  root  in  grief.  In 
proportion  to  his  power  of  sympathetic  grief  is  his  sense 
of  righteousness.  Of  the  righteous  servant  of  the  Lord 
it  is  said:  "He  was  a  Man  of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with 
grief." 

It  is  to  his  grief  also  that  man,  in  a  large  measure,  owes 
the  development  of  his  purposeful  intelligence.  Intelli- 
gence is  man's  defensive  armor  against  the  cruelties  that 
beset  him.  By  his  purposeful  intelligence  he  defends  him- 
self from  the  extremities  of  heat  and  cold;  he  lays  by  fuel 
for  the  winter  and  ice  for  the  summer.  To  ward  off  the 
horrors  of  starvation,  man  has  contrived  the  plow  and 
the  harrow,  the  cultivator  and  the  thresher.  To  assure 
himself  against  the  woes  of  poverty,  he  has  devised  govern- 
ments and  laws,  and  has  sheltered  himself  behind  the  pro- 
tection of  States.  The  fear  of  want  haunts  the  millionaire 
as  well  as  the  pauper  and  stirs  him  to  intellectual  activity. 
It  is,  in  a  degree,  because  a  man's  fear  of  deprivation  passed 
out  beyond  himself  to  his  children  and  his  grandchildren 
that  we  have  had  all  the  vast  improvements  in  commercial 
and  industrial  activities.  It  is  true  that  men  have  come 
to  enjoy  these  activities  for  their  own  sakes,  but  they  had 
their  origin  in  his  desire  that  his  children  should  not  come 
to  want.  Human  nature,  as  distinct  from  animal  nature, 
has  been  forged  in  the  fires  of  human  affliction.  Out  of 


354       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

his  grief  man  has  derived  his  sympathy,  his  morality,  and 
his  wisdom. 

Sorrow  has  not  only  been  man's  teacher,  it  has  been  his 
maker.  Because  of  this,  the  old  theologies  are  right  in 
thinking  of  affliction  as  a  visitation  of  God.  They  were 
wrong  in  thinking  of  such  visitation  as  a  visitation  of 
wrath.  Sympathy,  righteousness,  and  wisdom  are  divine 
powers  exercised  by  and  through  human  nature.  The  love 
of  God,  the  righteousness  of  God,  and  the  wisdom  of  God 
are  known  to  us  only  as  we  see  them,  as  Human  love, 
Human  righteousness,  Human  wisdom;  and  because  of  this, 
God  and  Humanity  are  One. 

The  salvation  of  the  world  lies  in  the  recognition  of  this 
truth.  The  forces  of  man's  redemption  from  cruelty,  ini 
quity,  and  folly  are  to  be  found  in  the  nature  of  man.  Both 
the  Kingdom  of  God  and  the  kingdom  of  evil  are  within 
us;  out  of  our  hearts  proceed  the  issues  of  life  and  death. 
Only  human  compassion  can  stay  the  course  of  human 
cruelty;  only  human  righteousness  can  curb  human  ini- 
quity, only  human  wisdom  can  cure  human  folly. 

On  the  battle-fields  of  Europe  we  have  all  witnessed  a 
gigantic  struggle  of  natural  cruelty,  injustice,  and  folly 
against  human  sympathy,  justice,  and  wisdom.  Man  is 
akin  to  the  beast  and  the  god.  In  Christendom  the  beast 
has  broken  loose  and  defied  the  god.  Physical  force,  with 
its  utter  indifference  to  pain  and  loss,  is  under  the  control 
of  highly  developed  intelligence  fighting  for  the  possession 
of  the  earth.  It  is  as  if  the  tigers  of  the  jungle,  equipped 
with  the  mind  of  man  had  broken  loose  to  over-run  the 
world.  Such  beasts  have  no  comprehension  of  human 
values.  The  lives  of  children,  the  chastity  of  women,  treas- 
ures of  art, — all  are  nothing  to  them  but  obstacles  in  the 
way  of  their  conquest.  They  come  upon  a  field  of  growing 
grain  and  leave  it  a  trampled  waste;  they  come  upon  a 
beautiful  city  and  leave  it  a  hopeless  ruin;  they  come  upon 
a  virtuous  woman,  and  leave  her  an  involuntary  harlot. 
When  we  look  upon  such  widespread,  wasteful  cruelty 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  355 

we  despair  of  our  race  which  is  ceasing  to  be  human  and 
is  merging  itself  with  the  non-human  elements  of  nature, — 
cruel  of  necessity,  and  having  no  heart  of  compassion. 

But  while  we  are  thus  despairing  over  unspeakable 
cruelties,  we  are  beholding  a  manifestation  of  human  sym- 
pathy that  secures  our  faith  in  our  humanity  against  all 
future  doubt.  Men  and  women  far  removed  from  the 
scenes  of  conflict,  outside  the  sphere  of  its  operations,  are 
giving  of  their  substance  and  their  lives  in  the  cause  of 
their  compassion;  they  are  flocking  by  the  thousands  and 
the  hundreds  of  thousands  to  rescue  and  nurse  the  wound- 
ed ;  to  feed  the  hungry  and  comfort  the  dying.  The  contri- 
bution of  the  American  people  to  the  relief  of  the  sufferers 
in  the  European  War  is  unparalleled  in  human  compassion. 
Every  one  has  made  an  offering  great  or  small  to  aid  these 
victims  of  man's  cruelty.  Our  young  men  have  gone  as 
stretcher-bearers ;  our  young  women  as  nurses,  and  these 
have  been  subject  to  all  the  perils  of  war.  We  of  America 
have  taken  sides  in  this  war,  the  side  of  compassion  against 
cruelty,  of  life  against  death. 

And  this  is  not  the  end.  The  war  will  be  followed  by 
a  reaction  against  the  horrors,  the  cruelties,  the  abomina- 
tions of  war  such  as  will  make  such  a  war  impossible  for 
generations,  if  not  forever.  Out  of  this  great  grief  will 
come  an  increase  of  compassion. 

A  like  reaction  against  the  horrible  injustice  of  the  War 
will  go  far  to  remove  one  of  its  efficient  causes.  All  man- 
kind will  learn,  as  from  a  fearful  moving  picture,  that  the 
safety  of  a  people  does  not  lie  in  the  greatness  of  the 
State.  The  great  States,  those  that  are  reckoned  as  first- 
class  powers,  are  in  this  war  the  victims  of  their  great- 
ness: Germany  with  its  mighty  army,  England  with  its 
great  navy,  are  in  deadlock,  and  the  youthful  life  of  these 
militant  and  naval  countries  is  being  crushed  out  of  exis- 
tence by  their  impact,  while  little  Holland  and  Switzer- 
land, Denmark,  Norway,  and  Sweden  are  being  saved  from 
the  greater  calamities  of  these  calamitous  times.  England 
is  paying  dear  for  her  naval  supremacy,  Germany  for  her 


356        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

military  might,  and  are  verifying  the  saying  of  Jesus: 
"Blessed  are  the  meek,  for  they  shall  inherit  the  earth." 

The  human  sense  of  justice  is  in  rebellion  against  the 
horrible  injustice  of  a  system  that  is  the  occasion  of  so 
great  a  catastrophe.  It  is  impossible  that  the  state  sys- 
tem of  Europe  should  survive  the  present  war.  It  is 
shocking  to  the  sense  of  justice  in  man  that  one  who  calls 
himself  an  emperor  or  a  king  should  hold  in  the  hollow  of 
his  hand  the  peace  of  the  world  and  be  able,  by  the  signing 
of  his  name,  to  launch  evils  so  fearful  upon  innocent  people. 
Who  and  what  is  such  a  man  who  thus  dares  to  disturb  our 
peace  and  make  of  our  world  a  shamble?  He  must  be 
deprived  of  his  power  in  the  interest  of  all  mankind.  There 
can  be  no  peace,  there  ought  to  be  no  peace,  so  long  as  such 
a  man  exists  in  the  world.  Mankind  will  be  well  repaid  for 
all  the  horrors  of  this  war  if  the  end  of  the  War  sees  the  end 
of  imperialism,  so  that  from  henceforth  no  imperial  man  and 
no  imperial  nation  shall  claim  and  exercise  the  right  of  rule 
in  the  earth. 

Nor  will  mankind  in  the  future  have  aught  to  do  with 
secret  diplomacy.  No  body  of  men  sitting  behind  closed 
doors  shall  decide  the  issues  of  war  and  peace.  The  people 
must  be  consulted  in  this, — which  is  to  them  a  matter  of 
life  and  death.  The  people  do  the  fighting  and  the  paying, 
and  as  a  matter  of  justice  the  decision  rests  with  them. 
When  we  think  of  America,  during  this  period  of  stress 
and  storm,  held  steadily  in  its  course  by  the  will  of  a  man 
who  but  a  while  ago  was  a  private  citizen,  and  who  will 
soon  be  a  private  citizen  again,  we  see  the  vast  superiority 
of  the  American  democratic  system  over  the  imperial  and 
semi-imperial  systems  of  Europe.  And  this  is  a  presage 
of  the  future,  when  the  people  of  the  world  will  consciously 
rule  the  world  and  by  their  common  sense  and  justice  put  an 
end  to  that  injustice, — political,  industrial  and  social, — which 
is  the  efficient  cause  of  international,  class,  and  social  struggles 
that  destroy  the  peace  and  happiness  of  mankind.  It  is  only 
by  human  justice  that  injustice  can  be  driven  from  the  world.1 

1This  was  written  before  the  fiasco  of  the  Conference  at  Paris. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  357 

Not  only  does  this  war  stand  condemned  as  cruel  and 
unjust,  but  it  is  also  seen  to  be  the  acme  of  human  folly. 
What  we  behold  in  Europe  to-day  is  a  sight  worthy  of 
Bedlam ;  only  in  a  madhouse  might  we  expect  such  scenes 
of  blind  fury  and  irrational  destruction.  These  warring 
nations,  in  a  fit  of  passion,  are  making  havoc  of  their  own 
prosperity;  the  things  which  should  have  been  for  their 
health  have  become  to  them  an  occasion  of  falling;  that 
vast  power  over  the  forces  of  nature  which  is  the  gift  of 
science  to  mankind  is  being  used  by  the  political  rulers  of 
the  nations  for  the  destruction  of  mankind.  Just  when 
humanity,  by  means  of  applied  science,  might  have  escaped 
from  under  the  burden  of  poverty  the  race  is, — by  the  stu- 
pendous folly  of  kings,  emperors,  and  statesmen, — placed 
under  new  burdens  beyond  all  that  they  or  their  fathers 
were  able  to  bear. 

The  destruction  of  wealth  surpasses  the  destruction  of 
life,  and  the  labor  of  mankind  in  the  warring  countries  is 
mortgaged  for  generations  to  come.  Surely,  unless  hu- 
man reason  is  to  abdicate  in  favor  of  the  folly  of  fools, 
some  saner  method  than  that  of  cruel  warfare  will  be, — 
indeed,  must  be, — devised  by  the  purposeful  intelligence  of 
man  for  the  settlement  of  questions  at  issue  between  people 
and  people. 

The  outcome  of  the  present  war  can  be  nothing  else 
than  the  organization  of  the  world  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  peace  of  the  world.  Outraged  compassion,  justice,  and 
wisdom  will  demand  such  organization  as/a  reparation  for 
the  past  and  a  remedy  for  the  future/The  god  in  man 
must  hold  the  beast  in  man  in  leash,  and  use  the  beast  in 
the  work  and  interest  of  the  man. 

To  accomplish  this,  each  man  and  woman  and  child  must 
recognize  and  assert  the  divinity  that  is  within  each.  Too 
long  has  man  sought  for  his  god  in  the  skies,  and  by 
prayer  and  supplication  cried  to  him  for  help  in  time  of 
need.  As  man  could  make  nothing  and  do  nothing  with 
the  forces  of  nature  so  long  as  he  thought  them  in  the 


358        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

keeping  of  the  gods,  so  he  can  make  nothing  and  do  noth- 
ing with  the  forces  of  human  nature  so  long  as  he  thinks 
of  them  as  divine  only  and  not  human, 

The  saving  forces  of  humanity  are  in  and  of  humanity. 
Kindness,  goodness,  wisdom,  are  found  nowhere,  so  far  as 
our  observation  goes,  except  in  human  hearts.  If  they  are 
the  attributes  of  any  god  then  that  god  has  made  the  hu- 
man heart  his  dwelling-place.  We  have  the  highest  au- 
thority for  declaring  tfiaTthV  body  of  man  is  the  temple  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  and  his  soul  the  dwelling-place  of  the 
Most  High.  And  this  Divine  Presence  is  not  the  prerog- 
ative of  any  priest  or  of  any  king;  it  is  the  birthright  of  the 
lowly  of  heart;  it  is  as  common  and  as  useful  as  the  grass 
of  the  field. 

Our  quarrel  with  current  theologies  is  not  with  their 
affirmations,  but  with  their  negations  and  limitations.  When 
I  am  told  that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God,  I  bow  my  head  in 
reverent  consent ;  but  when  I  am  told  that  Jesus  is  the  only 
Son  of  God,  I  lift  my  head  in  protest  and  protection  of  my 
own  Divine  sonship.  IK  too,  am  the  son  of  God,  not  by 
legal  adoption,  but  by  spiritual  generation.  I  do  not,  like 
Newman,  look  abroad  in  the  world  to  see  the  face  of 
God,  nor  do  I  look  to  see  that  face  in  the  doctrines  of  any 
church.  I  My  own  heart  is  my  mirror  in  which  I  see  the 
face  of  God  revealed  in  its  kindness,  its  goodness,  and  its 
wisdom.  My  human  nature  is  not  merely  a  reflection  of, 
it  is  the  Divine  nature.  In  the  mirror  of  my  heart  I  see 
my  own  face  as  the  face  of  GodJjx'When  a  pope  says  to 
me:  "I  am  the  Vicar  of  God  on  me  earth,"  I  do  not  deny 
his  claim,  I  only  offset  it  with  my  own:  "If  the  Pope,  in 
his  place,  is  the  Vicar  of  Christ  and  God,  so  am  I  in  mine." 
Whoever  I  be  and  wherever  I  am 

I    am   set   to    do    God's   thinking, 

With    Him    to    work    and    plan; 
From    toil    nor   sorrow    shrinking, 

As  we   build  a  soul   for  man. 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  359 

Human  nature  has  within  itself  the  laws  and  forces  of 
its  own  progress  from  lower  to  higher  forms  of  life.  By 
means  of  these  forces,  in  obedience  to  these  laws,  it  has 
through  much  tribulation  emerged  from  the  bestial  savagery 
of  the  cave  into  the  comparatively  human  condition  of  the 
present  time;  it  has  abolished  cannibalism  and  chattel 
slavery  and  child  exposure;  it  is  abolishing  industrial  tyr- 
anny, the  exploitation  of  labor,  and  the  subjection  of 
women. 

Humanity  is  not  yet  finished,  it  is  still  in  the  making, 
and  its  Maker  is  not  any  God  sitting  aloft,  nor  is  it  any 
emperor,  king,  or  pope  acting  in  the  name  and  power  of 
such  God.  It  is  Humanity  that  is  making  Humanity. 


CHAPTER  LXIX 

The  Service  of  God 

It  is  related  of  the  Roman  general  Pompey  that,  on  one 
of  his  military  expeditions  in  the  East,  he  occupied,  tem- 
porarily, the  City  of  Jerusalem.  While  there  he  visited 
the  Temple,  and  in  spite  of  the  remonstrances  of  the  priests, 
he  pushed  aside  the  veil  and  entered  the  Holy  of  Holies. 
The  Roman  was  astonished  beyond  measure  when  he  dis- 
covered that  there  was  no  statue  nor  image  of  any  god 
in  that  sacred  place ;  and  he  inquired  if  the  people  of  the 
Jews  were  a  godless  people ;  he  having  always  associated 
the  existence  of  a  god  with  the  image  of  that  god.  If  the 
Roman  wished  to  pray  to  the  god  of  war  for  victory,  he 
sought  out  some  temple  of  Mars,  where  the  god  sat  in 
chiseled  majesty  to  receive  the  adoration  of  his  worshippers. 

This  absence  of  a  graven  image  in  the  Temple  at  Jerusa- 
lem was  one  of  several  reasons  why  the  religion  of  the 
Jews  was  so  great  a  scandal  to  the  ancient  world.  There 
was  a  god  in  every  temple  except  in  the  Temple  at  Jerus- 


360       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

alem,  which  was  godless;  and  this  charge  of  godlessness 
passed  from  the  city  and  the  Temple  to  the  people;  so  it 
came  to  pass  that  the  most  intensely  religious  people  in 
the  world  lay  under  the  charge  of  irreligion. 

The  primitive  Christians  were  condemned  as  Atheists, 
because  they  would  not  sacrifice  of  their  flocks  and  their 
herds  in  the  temple  of  the  gods.  Animal  sacrifice  was  the 
prevalent  mode  of  worship.  So  when  the  Christians  ab- 
stained from  this  practice  they  offended  the  religious  sensi- 
bilities of  their  times;  this  offense  being  so  serious  that  it 
brought  down  on  them  the  wrath  of  the  populace  and  the 
condemnation  of  the  law.  For  four  centuries  the  Chris- 
tians suffered  persecution  even  unto  death,  because  they 
would  not  worship  in  accordance  with  the  custom  of  their 
day. 

£  Historic  facts  such  as  these  are  a  warning  to  the  thought- 
ful mind  not  to  confound  religious  custom  with  religion 
itself.  }  As  well  might  one  confuse  the  clothing  of  a  man 
with  "me  man  himself.  Man  is,  it  is  true,  in  the  civilized 
world  a  clothed  animal,  and  is  never  seen  in  public  without 
his  clothing;  but  strip  a  man  of  his  garments,  and  he  is 
none  the  less  a  man;  nor  does  a  man's  body  change  its 
character  with  the  changing  fashion  of  his  dress;  whether 
he  wear  skirt  or  trousers,  "A  man's  a  man  for  a'  that," 
What  is  true  of  a  man  is  equally  true  of  religion.  Re- 
ligion as  a  principle  of  human  nature  survives  all  change 
of  religious  custom.  Custom  must  change  if  religion  is 
to  grow  with  the  growing  life  of  man;  the  man  cannot 
wear  the  jacket  of  a  boy.  To  say  of  religion  that  it  is  un- 
changeable in  its  creeds  and  its  customs  is  to  pronounce  it 
a  religion  of  creeds  and  customs  and  not  a  religion  of  life. 
Creeds  and  customs  appropriate  to  one  stage  of  evolution 
are  absurd  and  abhorrent  to  another.  A  modern  man  would 
not  care  to  go  to  church  with  a  cannibal  and  eat  the  flesh 
of  a  captive,  whose  heart  was  burning  on  a  near-by  altar 
as  a  tid-bit  offered  to  the  cannibal  god.  It  would  be  shock- 
ing beyond  measure  to  a  religious  woman  of  this  age  to 
attend  divine  worship  in  an  ancient  temple, — the  smell 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  361 

of  the  blood  and  the  burning  flesh  would  make  her  sick. 
Religion  will  change  its  mode  of  manifestation  because  it 
must;  it  drops  its  wornout  clothing,  that  it  may  reclothe 
itself  in  garments  in  keeping  with  its  present  estate. 

Religion  in  our  day  is  changing  its  mode  of  expression 
as  radically  as  it  did  when  Jewish  law  forbade  the  making 
a  graven  image  and  the  Christians  abandoned  the  custom 
of  animal  sacrifice.  To  many  minds  it  is  an  alarming  fact 
that  the  people  are  ceasing  to  go  to  church;  the  abandon- 
ment of  church-going  as  a  religious  duty  being  ascribed  to 
the  growing  indifference  of  the  people  to  religion  itself, 
as  if  in  forsaking  the  churches  they  are  forsaking  their  God. 
Every  device  is  used  to  bring  back  the  wandering  flock  to 
the  fold,  and  still  the  people  stay  away. 

This  absenteeism  is  peculiar  to  our  times.  In  the  primi- 
tive ages  the  people  ran  to  the  church  before  the  morning 
light;  they  went  to  church  in  the  gloom  of  cemeteries  and 
catacombs;  they  risked  their  lives  because  of  their  church 
attendance.  There  was  no  question  then  as  to  how  to  get 
the  people  to  go  to  church;  they  flocked  to  it  as  do  beg- 
gars to  a  feast.  In  the  medieval  period  the  people  went  to 
church  because  there  was  nowhere  else  for  them  to  go. 
The  church  was  their  life,  it  was  their  market-place,  their 
theatre,  their  social  center,  their  only  place  of  amusement; 
the  customs  of  the  church  were  the  customs  of  the  times, 
the  beliefs  of  the  church  were  the  beliefs  of  the  times. 
But,  unfortunately  for  the  church,  it  is  conservative  while 
the  spirit  of  the  people  is  progressive ;  therefore  the  reason 
why  the  people  do  not  go  to  church  is  because  the  people 
have  outgrown  the  churches. 

The  creeds  of  the  churches,  Protestant  and  Catholic,  have 
lost  their  hold  on  the  intelligence  of  men  and  women.  The 
words  of  the  creeds  of  the  Fourth  Century  have  no  meaning 
in  the  Twentieth  Century;  for  they  are  not  living  words, 
they  are  but  the  dead  symbols  of  a  dead  philosophy.  No 
one  to-day,  outside  of  a  theological  school, — concerns  him- 
self with  the  problems  of  substance  and  person,  which  so 
agitated  the  minds  of  the  generations  of  Arius  and  Athan- 


362       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

asius,  of  Cyril  and  Nestorius.  These  questions  that  were 
eagerly  canvassed  in  the  streets  and  market-places  of 
Alexandria  and  Antioch,  now  engage  the  languid  interest  of 
the  seminarian;  but  these  Greek  creeds  are  all  Greek  to 
the  man  in  the  street. 

The  Protestant  creeds  of  the  Seventeenth  Century  are 
as  far  removed  from  the  modern  ways  of  thinking  as  are 
the  Catholic  creeds  of  the  Fourth  Century.  These  creeds 
are  seldom  mentioned  even  in  Protestant  churches.  The 
long  dogmatic  sermon  of  our  fathers,  expounding  the  doc- 
trine of  Grace,  is  never  heard  by  their  children;  such  ser- 
mons are  not  acceptable  to  modern  hearers.  A  clergy- 
man once  said  to  me : 

"I  hardly  mention  theology  in  my  sermons ;  I  do  not 
think  it  good  taste." 

The  creeds  are  in  evidence  only  at  times  of  ordination, 
when  candidates  for  the  ministry  must  solemnly  declare 
their  implicit  belief  in  doctrines,  which  from  that  day  until 
the  close  of  their  ministry  they  are  at  liberty  utterly  to 
ignore, — a  liberty  which  the  majority  gladly  take.  A  Pro- 
testant minister  preaches  of  anythmg  and  everything  ex- 
cepting the  doctrines  of  his  church.  {Tt  is  quite  evident  that 
the  creeds  now  survive  only  in  the  inherited  prejudices  of 
mankind;  they  are  no  longer  reasoned  beliefs;  they  are  pre- 
served only  by  being  hermetically  sealed  away  from  the 
influence  of  the  intelligence.  They  disintegrate  when  they 
come  in  contact  with  historical  research  or  are  subjected 
to  scientific  analysis. } 

And  unfortunately  for  ecclesiastical  Christianity,  its  creeds 
are  its  life.  When  it  cannot  preach  its  creeds  it  has  noth- 
ing to  preach.  Men  can  get  astronomy,  geology,  biology, 
ethics,  and  sociology  better  outside  the  church  than  in  it^— 
and  they  stay  outside  to  get  them. 

Real  religion  in  the  present  age  is  based  upon  knowledge 
rather  than  upon  belief.  Knowledge  is  not,  as  in  the 
theological  system,  the  bond-slave  of  belief,  but  belief  is 
the  handmaiden  of  knowledge.  The  religious  man  of  to- 
day does  not  say  with  the  Latin  Father:  "I  believe  be- 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  363 

cause  I  cannot  understand";  the  modern  does  not,  as  did 
the  ancient  and  medieval  man,  allow  his  beliefs  to  run 
rampant,  he  subjects  them  to  constant  verification  and  re- 
argument;  he  is  always  seeking  to  transmute  belief  into 
knowledge,  and  if  a  belief  is  incapable  of  such  transmuta- 
tion, the  modern  man  lays  it  aside  as  being  useless  for  the 
purposes  of  human  life. 

The  modern  world  differs  from  the  ancient  and  medieval 
in  holding  belief  thus  in  the  service  of  knowledge.  The 
ancient  and  medieval  man  was  credulous  in  believing;  the 
modern  man  is  careful.  It  is  this  attitude  of  the  modern 
mind  that  will  make  forever  impossible  any  return  to  the 
creedal  churches,  either  Catholic  or  Protestant.  The 
stream  of  life  and  thought  is  not  into  but  away  from  these 
venerable  organizations ;  there  will  doubtless  be  backward 
eddies  into  the  ancient  pools  of  belief,  but  the  river  flows 
down  to  the  sea  of  modern  thought. 

The  modern  spiritual  architecture  is  classic  not  Gothic. 
As  the  Greek  of  old,  the  modern  man  knows  his  limitations. 
He  does  not  aspire,  but  is  lowly  in  his  own  mind,  and  builds 
his  spiritual  temple  out  of  the  thoughts  he  can  fathom  and 
out  of  the  experiences  of  his  every-day  life.  He  never 
dreams  that  his  temple  includes  God;  he  is  content  if  it 
does  not  exclude  him.  And  like  the  Greek  temple,  his  re- 
ligious system,  based  as  it  is  in  the  solid  earth  of  human 
experience  and  built  out  of  the  hewn  stone  of  human  knowl- 
edge, will  stand  as  long  as  human  experience  and  human 
knowledge  shall  endure.  Every  addition  to  human  knowl- 
edge is  an  addition  to  this  spiritual  temple  that  man  is 
building ;  "only  a  religion  based  upon  knowledge  can  be  per- 
manent and  catholic,  for  knowledge,  which  is  acquired  truth, 
is  the  same  everywhere  and  always.  Creeds,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  opinions,  and  opinions  change;  creeds  are  opin- 
ions and  opinions  differ;  therefore  a  creedal  religion  can 
be  but  temporary  and  local.  In  our  day  creedal  religion 
is  being  displaced  by  the  religion  of  knowledge. 

This  change  of  base  from  belief  to  knowledge  has  made 
what  is  called  the  public  worship  of  the  church  repugnant 


364  THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS 

to  the  modern  man.  The  prayers  and  praises  of  the  church 
make  no  appeal  to  a  soul  that  lives  in  the  modern  thought 
world.  To  such  a  soul  the  prayers  of  the  church  seem  fu- 
tile, the  praises  of  the  church  fatuous.  Prayer  is  based  upon 
the  ancient  belief  that  the  mind  of  God  is  a  different  thing 
from  the  mind  of  nature,  and  that  by  persuasion  the  mind 
of  God  can  be  moved  to  interfere  with  and  change  the 
mind  of  nature.  All  prayer  for  outward  blessing  is  vain; 
no  one  to-day  prays  seriously  for  rain  or  fair  weather;  no 
one  in  time  of  pestilence  calls  on  the  bishops  and  the  priests 
to  ask  their  God  to  stay  the  plague.  The  modern  religious 
man  takes  his  weather  as  it  comes,  shielding  himself  against 
its  inclemencies  by  his  own  devices,  and  looks  for  the 
cause  of  his  sickness,  not  in  the  wrath  of  some  god,  but 
in  the  presence  of  some  microbe,  which  he  fights  not  with 
prayer  but  with  toxin. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  the  Catholic  Church  may  sur- 
vive into  the  future  by  shedding  its  doctrine  and  its  disci- 
pline and  becoming  nothing  else  but  the  vehicle  of  man's 
worship  of  the  mystery  of  life.  But  without  its  doctrine 
and  its  discipline,  the  Catholic  Church  would  not  be  the 
Catholic  Church.  Its  life  is  bound  up  with  the  papal 
claims,  and  these  claims  have  been  rejected  by  the  modern 
world. 

The  English  Church  has  greater  possibilities  of  survival 
than  the  Church  of  Rome,  for  the  reason  that,  by  the  prin- 
ciple of  interpretation,  it  adapts  its  creeds  to  the  changing 
thought  of  the  world,  while  its  clergy  are  men  of  the  people 
and  not  rulers  but  leaders  of  the  congregations.  Priestly 
authority  is  asserted  by  High  Churchmen,  but  it  is  a 
mere  assertion,  having  no  validity.  The  English  Church 
has  not  only  the  advantage  of  intellectual  liberty  and  free- 
dom from  priestly  dominion,  it  has  the  further  advantage 
of  using  a  living  language  in  its  public  worship.  The 
English  Bible  and  Prayer  Book  have  been  invaluable  aids 
in  preserving  the  beauty  and  the  purity  of  English  speech 
against  vulgar  defilement. 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  365 

But  neither  the  Catholic  nor  the  Anglican  liturgies  can, 
in  their  present  form,  express  the  thought  and  the  feeling 
of  the  present  age  and  the  age  to  come.  Both  liturgies 
are  too  pessimistic,  too  servile:  they  represent  humanity  as 
depraved  and  helpless.  The  worship  of  the  future  will 
have  in  it  the  spirit  of  Goethe  and  Wordsworth,  of  Whit- 
man and  Emerson,  rather  than  the  moods  of  the  Psalms  of 
the  temple  and  the  hymns  of  the  church.  The  worship 
of  the  future  will  have  a  sober  joyousness  and  unquench- 
able hopefulness,  inspired  by  an  enthusiasm  for  that  Hu- 
manity which,  no  matter  how  often  it  has  fallen  by  the  way, 
has  lifted  itself  up  by  its  own  inherent  strength  and  pressed 
onward  and  upward  into  higher,  nobler  life. 

The  worship  of  the  churches  must  be  purged  of  all 
flatteries  and  obsequiousness ;  from  this  time  forth  man 
will  respect  his  God  by  respecting  himself;  he  will  ac- 
knowledge that  he  is  a  worm,  but  he  will  also  assert  that 
he  is  a  man,  and  as  a  man  he  will  stand  upright  in  the 
presence  of  his  God.  Man  is  God's  workman,  and  he  has 
risen  to  equality  with  his  employer.  If  man  needs  God, 
no  less  does  God  need  man;  and  so  man  sings  his  hymn 
of  willing  service: 

Is   there   a   God   out  yonder 

Sore    troubled    and    beset; 
Doth    he    in    waters    flounder, 

Is     he   faint,   cold,  and  wet? 

Doth  he  call  to  me  for  aid 

Across    the    seas    of    doubt; 
Must  I   death's  deep  waters  wade 

That  I  may  help  him  out? 

la  there  a  God  that  needs  me? 

Then  let  him  tell  me   so 
When    death   from   this   flesh   frees    me, 

I'm   his   for   weal   or   woe. 


366        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

The  attitude  of  modern  religion  toward  the  universe  is 
one  of  intelligent  appreciation,  patient  adaptation,  and  a 
willing  subjection  to  its  service.  The  present  world  is  not 
so  good  to  any  man  that  he  does  not  wish  to  make  it 
better;  he  finds  the  world,  as  the  gods  have  made  it,  not 
quite  to  his  liking  and  he  seeks  its  constant  improvement. 
/  The  revolution  in  thought  and  feeling,  which  is  now 
changing  radically  the  modes  of  religious  expression,  is  ac- 
complishing its  end  by  removing  the  activities  of  religion 
from  the  unknown  to  the  known,  from  the  future  to  the 
present.  It  does  not  pray  to  an  absentee  God;  it  works 
with  a  present  God.  In  the  old  religions  man  had  to  be 
transformed  into  the  nature  of  God;  in  the  modern  re- 
ligion God  has  to  be  transformed  into  the  nature  of  man. 
He  has  not  only  to  be  in  man,  He  has  to  become  man;  and 
it  is  only  as  He  lives  in  Humanity  that  Humanity  can  live 
in  Him.  We  say  not:  "Lo  here!  lo  there!"  for  the  Pres- 
ence of  God  is  within  us.  Our  Humanity  is  the  only 
power  that  can  save  Humanity. 

Our  quarrel  with  the  creedal  and  priestly  churches  is  that 
they  do  not  help,  they  hinder  the  growth  of  human  sym- 
pathy, which  is  the  saving  power  of  the  world.  The  pres- 
ent frightful  condition  of  Europe  is  owing,  in  a  measure, 
to  the  hatreds  engendered  by  hostile  religious  creeds.  For 
centuries  Catholics  have  preached  hatred  of  Protestants 
and  Protestants  hatred  of  Catholics,  making  hatred  not  love 
the  cohesive  force  of  religion ;  and  as  they  are  thus  practiced 
in  hatred,  they  have  made  themselves  the  easy  tools  of  the 
animosities  of  nations  and  the  antagonism  of  classes. 

Christianity, — which  in  the  mind  of  Jesus  was  the  re- 
ligion of  sympathy,  unlimited  by  race,  or  creed,  or  coun- 
try,— has  become  the  established  religion  of  racial,  creedal, 
and  national  hatreds.  Fear  and  hatred  have  become  the 
very  warp  and  woof  of  Christendom,  which  is  burning  up 
in  the  fires  of  a  hatred  that  religion  kindled  centuries  ago 
and  is  now  powerless  to  extinguish.  Christendom  cannot 
survive  the  present  calamity,  which  its  lack  of  humanity 
has  brought  upon  it;  indeed,  there  is  now  no  Christendom, 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  367 

only  a  struggling,  fighting  mass  of  races,  creeds,  nation- 
alities, and  classes,  which  have  lost  all  love  of  their  com- 
mon humanity  in  their  religious,  class,  and  race  hatreds. 
The  only  hope  for  Europe  and  the  world  is  that  this  vast 
social  upheaval  shall  bring  men  face  to  face  with  their  com- 
mon humanity,  as  the  only  source  of  their  common  safety. 

The  intelligence  of  man  has  outgrown  the  old  limita- 
tions. By  the  invention  of  the  means  of  rapid  transit 
and  inter-communication,  the  world  of  man  is  now  one 
world.  The  world  has  attained  to  world  consciousness;  a 
world  brain  and  nervous  system  has  been  evolved,  which 
compels  every  one  in  the  world  to  suffer  the  pain  of  the 
world.  Human  intelligence  has  extended  the  area  of  hu- 
man sympathy;  and  human  sympathy  will,  in  due  time, 
abolish  the  horrors  of  war  as  it  has  abolished  the  burning 
of  witches. 

This  religion  of  Humanity  is  not  coming;  it  has  come. 
Already  it  has  released  the  human  mind  from  bondage  to 
external  authority;  it  has  unified  the  world  in  a  common 
knowledge;  it  is  employing  the  religious  energies  of  the 
soul  in  improving  social  conditions ;  it  is  escaping  the 
churches,  to  find  its  home  in  the  streets  of  the  city  and  the 
byways  of  the  country;  it  is  seeking  to  know  the  will  of 
life,  that  it  may  do  it. /Christianity  is  a  failure,  because 
it  abandoned  the  teachings  of  Jesus  for  the  creeds  and  rule 
of  the  churches^  Claiming  Jesus  as  its  Founder,  it  has 
come  to  hate  what  Jesus  loved  and  to  love  what  Jesus 
hated.  Because  of  this,  the  spirit  of  Jesus  has  forsaken 
the  churches  and  has  made  its  home  in  the  outside  world. 

We  are  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  age  born  of  a  great 
sorrow.  Institutionalism  is  giving  place  of  Humanism.  It 
is  man  as  man  who  is  to  merge  all  races,  religions,  na- 
tions, and  classes  into  one  common  humanity.  Humanity 
is  the  whole  of  which  these  are  the  parts;  and  the  whole 
is  always  greater  than  any  of  the  parts. 

World  Opinion  is  the  pope  of  the  coming  age,  having 
in  its  keeping  the  faith  and  the  morals  of  mankind.  The 


368       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

common  intelligence,  the  common  righteousness,  the  com- 
mon sympathy  will  overrule  all  lesser  intelligence,  all 
minor  morality,  all  narrower  sympathy. 

The  ministers  of  this  religion  are  already  in  its  active 
service.  These  ministers  are  physicians  whose  knowledge 
admits  of  no  racial,  national,  or  creedal  limitations;  they 
are  the  students  of  nature,  whose  discoveries  are  necessarily 
the  common  property  of  the  human  mind;  they  are  inven- 
tors who,  by  their  genius,  make  every  man  neighbor  to 
every  man  and  so  make  the  law  "Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself"  of  universal  application;  they  are 
that  vast  company  of  men  and  women  who,  without  regard 
to  racial,  creedal,  or  national  considerations,  in  prisons,  in 
hospitals,  in  city  slums,  and  lonely  mountain  regions,  are 
doing  what  they  can  to  make  this  poor  world  of  ours  a 
better  world  for  man  to  live  in.  These  all  spend  their  lives 
directly  in  the  service  of  man,  and  make  no  distinction 
in  thought  or  action  between  the  service  of  Man  and  the 
service  of  God,  because  to  them  the  service  of  Man  is 
the  service  of  God,  and  the  service  of  God  is  the  service 
of  Man. 


CHAPTER  LXX 
The  Day  of  Judgment 

It  came  to  pass  on  the  Sunday  after  the  Feast  of  the 
Ascension,  in  the  year  nineteen  hundred  and  nineteen, 
that  I  was  present  at  the  high  celebration  of  the  Holy  Euch- 
arist in  the  Cathedral  of  All  Saints  in  the  City  of  Albany, 
New  York.  This  Cathedral, — the  creation  of  that  princely 
prelate,  William  Crosswell  Doane,  of  blessed  memory, — is  one 
of  the  few  Gothic  churches  worthy  of  the  name  that  have  been 
built  in  modern  times. 


THE  WAYS  OP  THE  GODS  369 

This  Church  is  set  upon  a  hill;  its  pinnacle  command- 
ing a  view  of  the  city  and  of  the  country  for  miles 
about.  Within,  its  choir  will  seat  some  two  hundred  persons, 
and  its  nave  and  aisles  two  thousand  more.  Its  columns  of 
hewn  stone,  extending  from  the  western  doorway  to  the  choir 
steps,  give  to  this  interior  a  sublimity  worthy  of  the  house 
of  God;  its  high  altar  of  purest  marble  is  a  fitting  table  upon 
which  to  offer  the  divine  sacrifice  of  the  Body  and  Blood. 

When  I  entered  the  church  the  choir  of  some  fifty  voices 
was  already  in  its  place ;  the  celebrant,  vested  in  alb  and  em- 
broidered chasuble,  with  four  attendant  priests,  was  within 
the  sanctuary;  the  great  function  of  the  day  was  in  course 
of  celebration.  But  what  impressed  me  as  I  stood  in  that 
church,  on  this  lovely  Sunday  morning,  was  not  the  sensuous 
beauty  of  this  act  of  worship  but  the  absence  of  worshippers. 
I  looked  over  the  wide  spaces  of  the  building  and  I  estimated 
that  there  were  present  about  fifty  men  and  one  hundred  and 
twenty  women  and  children ;  and  even  these  few  seemed  to 
have  little  interest  in  what  they  were  doing.  I  watched  their 
faces  and  I  did  not  see  a  gleam  of  glory  there ;  there  was  no 
divine  light  in  their  eyes;  their  listless  attitude,  the  dullness  of 
their  expression  made  one  wonder  why  they  were  there  at  all; 
one  felt  that  this  dull  folk  could  not  hold  their  God  in  high 
esteem ;  they  were  so  apathetic  in  his  presence. 

At  the  proper  place  in  the  program  the  preacher  went  up 
into  the  pulpit  to  preach.  He  was  a  man  in  middle  life,  of 
medium  height,  clean  shaven,  full  breasted,— a  pleasant  man 
to  look  upon.  He  evidently  took  himself  seriously-  His 
entrance  into  his  pulpit  was  a  matter  of  a  great  formality;  a 
verger  in  black  gown  with  mace  in  hand  preceded  him  to  the 
steps  of  the  pulpit  and  made  obeisance  to  him  as  he  ascended 
to  the  high  place  from  whence  he  was  to  speak  to  the  people 
the  Word  of  God.  Before  he  addressed  his  congregation  he 
turned  and  bowed  to  the  altar  and  called  upon  the  Holy  Spirit 
of  God  to  inspire  his  words  with  wisdom  from  on  high. 

As  this  Sunday  was  in  the  octave  of  the  Ascension,  that 
event  was  naturally  the  theme  of  the  preacher's  sermon.  He 
proceeded,  in  all  seriousness,  to  tell  us,  his  hearers,  that  the 


370        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

Ascension  of  Jesus  into  the  heavens  was  an  outward  event  in 
the  history  of  mankind.  He  said  that  on  a  certain  day  and  at 
a  certain  place,  a  man  called  Jesus,  who  had  been  dead  and 
was  buried,  but  who  had  arisen  from  the  dead  and  had  come 
out  of  his  grave,  before  the  eyes  of  many  witnesses, — his 
human  body  intact;  compact  of  flesh  and  blood  and  bones, — 
did,  of  his  own  volition,  rise  slowly  from  the  earth  into  the 
sky,  and,  while  the  gazers  watched,  this  body  passed  from 
their  sight  into  a  region  that  they  called  heaven-  This  story 
as  the  preacher  told  it  interested  neither  him  nor  his  hearers ; 
the  marvel  of  it  did  not  give  convincing  power  to  his  voice, 
nor  did  it  stir  the  hearts  of  the  congregation  to  astonishment 
and  admiration.  While  he  preached  the  people,  as  before, 
sat  inattentive,  not  listening  to  the  sermon  but  waiting  for 
it  to  be  done  with ;  and  when  it  did  come  to  an  end  there  was 
a  stir  of  relief  in  the  little  gathering.  Then  the  preacher 
turned  again  to  the  altar  and  bowed,  ascribed  to  God  the  wis- 
dom and  the  glory  of  his  utterance,  went  down  out  of  the 
pulpit,  and  was  conducted  by  the  verger  to  his  place  in  the 
choir. 

In  that  moment  of  silence  the  drone  of  an  aeroplane  was 
heard  in  the  air,  and  all  the  people  sat  up  and  listened, — their 
faces  alive  with  interest  in  a  living  event.  As  I  came  out  of 
the  Church  into  the  open  and  saw  three  aeroplanes  going  up 
and  up  into  the  sky  until  they  were  lost  to  sight  behind  the 
clouds  in  the  upper  cirrus,  and  as  I  saw  all  the  streets  full  of 
people,  standing  at  gaze,  I  said  to  myself: 

"Alas !  poor  preacher,  the  miracles  of  your  Church  are  out- 
classed by  the  miracles  of  science.  What  you  said  could 
happen  only  once,  and  that  to  your  God,  now  happens  every 
day, — and  that  to  common  men-" 

There  is  nothing  in  all  the  history  of  religion  that  is  more 
conclusive  of  the  thesis  that  religious  beliefs  are  the  product 
of  economic  conditions  than  this  story  of  the  Ascension  of 
Jesus  with  its  consequent  doctrine  of  his  second  coming.  It 
has  been  said,  and  truly,  that  without  a  belief  in  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  there  would  have  been  no  Christianity.  The 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  371 

resurrection  of  itself,  however,  would  have  been  without  re- 
sult; it  was  the  belief  in  the  resurrection,  the  ascension,  and 
the  return  of  Jesus  that  became  the  creative  cause  of  Christen- 
dom. And  of  these  three  beliefs  the  last  was  by  far  the  most 
important  factor  in  bringing  Christendom  into  existence  and 
in  making  the  history  of  the  Western  world. 

The  preaching  of  Jesus  when  he  was  yet  alive  was  revolu- 
tionary. It  raised  in  the  hearts  of  the  mass  of  the  people 
who  heard  him  a  hope  for  better  things-  His  words  promised 
bread  to  the  hungry,  water  to  the  thirsty,  clothing  to  the 
naked,  shelter  to  the  homeless,  health  to  the  sick,  and  free- 
dom to  the  slave  and  the  prisoner.  It  was  an  economic  change 
that  Jesus  preached.  He  came  to  restore  the  Kingdom  to 
Israel ;  to  do  over  again  the  work  of  Joshua,  whose  name  he 
bore ;  to  drive  out  the  oppressor ;  to  redistribute  the  land ;  to 
cancel  all  debts ;  to  bring  in  that  condition  of  economic  equal- 
ity which  had  been  written  in  the  constitution  of  his  people 
in  the  name  of  their  great  law-giver  Moses. 

The  death  of  Jesus  would  naturally  have  put  an  end  to  this 
hope  of  his  disciples,  had  he  not  risen  up  in  the  heart  of 
Peter  and  inspired  this  great  follower  with  the  conviction 
that  the  Master  had  come  again  from  the  dead,  and  that  the 
revolution  which  he  preached  was  not  abandoned,  only  post- 
poned; that  he  who  had  gone  away  into  heaven  would  come 
again  with  glory  to  judge  the  world  in  righteousness,  to  put 
down  the  mighty  from  their  seat  and  to  exalt  the  humble 
and  meek,  to  fill  the  hungry  with  good  things  and  to  send  the 
rich  empty  away.  Peter  called  together  the  scattered  fol- 
lowers of  the  crucified  Jesus,  inspired  them  with  this  new 
hope,  and  so  inaugurated  the  greatest  religious  movement  in 
the  history  of  mankind.  The  Christian  Church  crystallized 
around  this  belief  in  the  Second  Coming  of  Jesus,  with  all 
the  economic  and  political  changes  which  that  coming  prom- 
ised. 

The  condition  of  the  Roman  world  gave  a  ready  welcome 
to  this  doctrine.  That  vast,  seething  mass  of  hopeless  pov- 
erty which,  as  a  quagmire,  was  engulfing  that  ancient  civiliza- 


372        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

tion  was  given  pause  by  the  energy  of  this  new  force.  The 
Christian  Church  gave  practical  expression  to  the  doctrine 
that  it  preached.  Within  the  Church  the  slave  was  the  equal 
of  his  master  and  the  poor  sat  at  the  table  of  the  rich. 

We  cannot  penetrate  at  all  into  the  secret  of  the  success  of 
early  Christianity  unless  we  understand  the  doctrine  of  the 
Communion  of  Saints-  The  primitive  church  was  a  com- 
munity, the  basis  of  which  was  economic  equality;  its  prin- 
ciple was  from  every  man  according  to  his  ability,  to  every 
man  according  to  his  need.  The  belief  in  the  speedy  second 
coming  of  Jesus,  bringing  to  an  end  as  it  would  this  present 
world,  deprived  all  worldly  possessions  of  essential  value, 
so  that  men  who  had  houses  and  lands  sold  them  and  laid  the 
price  at  the  apostles'  feet.  And  that  which  was  first  an  en- 
thusiasm became  a  habit  and  unworldliness  was  the  badge  of 
the  Christian;  the  ambition  for  place  and  power  and  earthly 
wealth,  which  was  the  passion  of  the  men  of  this  world,  was 
abomination  to  the  Christian. 

Private  wealth  in  its  most  virulent  form,  consisting  as  it 
did  of  private  ownership,  by  enslavement  of  the  working 
class,  carried  on  implacable  warfare  against  this  common- 
wealth. But  in  spite  of  persecutions  the  Christian  community 
increased  in  numbers,  in  wealth,  in  moral  and  spiritual  power, 
until  private  wealth  was  compelled  to  compromise  with  it  and 
give  to  the  religion  of  Christ  first  a  place,  then  the  chief  place, 
and  finally  the  exclusive  place  in  the  religious  life  of  the 
Roman  Empire. 

The  result  of  this  triumph  of  Christianity  was  the  loss  of 
}'  its  distinctive  institution-  The  world  became  Christian  only 
on  condition  that  the  church  should  become  worldly.  The 
little  self-governing  communities  of  Christian  folk"  were 
merged  into  the  vast  imperial  church ;  the  bishops  became 
prelates  and  popes,  and  sat  beside  the  princes  and  the 
emperors.  The  distinction  between  the  Church  and  the 
world  was  obliterated,  and  these  two  were  of  one  mind  as 
to  the  desirability  of  earthly  pomp,  power,  and  riches.  This 
state  of  affairs  caused  the  more  ardent  Christians,  those  who 
still  held  to  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  to  abandon  both  the  world 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  373 

and  the  secular  Church;  and  fleeing  to  the  desert  and  the 
wilderness,  they  hid  themselves  in  caves,  they  embraced  pov- 
erty as  a  bride,  and  would  none  other. 

The  outcome  of  this  movement  was  the  monastic  system. 
These  anchorites  formed  little  communities,  in  which  there 
was  absolute  economic  equality-  Organized  by  Saint  Benedict 
of  Nursia,  the  monastic  system  spread  all  over  Europe,  and 
was  the  salvation  of  the  Western  world.  In  the  midst  of  the 
wars  that  never  ceased,  the  monastery  was  unprotected  and  at 
peace;  its  gate  was  open;  it  knew  no  foes;  it  succored,  with 
equal  charity,  the  Swabian  and  the  Frank:  the  monk  could 
among  armed  men  walk  freely,  protected  by  his  sanctity, 
.  poverty  and  his  charity.  As  a  consequence,  out  of  these  co- 
operative communities  came  the  rulers  of  the  world.  The 
monastery  gave  its  bishops  and  popes  to  the  Church  and  its 
teachers  and  statesmen  to  the  nations.  But  the  government 
of  the  world  was  a  side  issue  with  these  holy  men:  their  real 
business  was  to  watch  and  wait  and  pray  for  the  Coming  of 
the  Lord. 

The  belief  in  the  Second  Coming  of  Jesus  reached  its  high- 
est pitch  of  intensity, — after  the  first  enthusiasm  had  passed 
away, — in  the  year  one  thousand.  Man  has  always  been 
under  the  spell  of  numbers,  and  this  year  one  thousand 
aroused  feelings  of  awe  and  expectation.  The  state  of 
Europe  was  one  of  poverty  and  ignorance  that  made  the  pre- 
sent a  horror  and  the  future  a  fear.  Thoughtful  men  natur- 
ally despaired  of  this  world:  its  ending  seemed  the  only  way 
out  of  its  misery;  and  as  the  year  nine  hundred  and  ninety 
nine  passed  away  hysteria  took  possession  of  all  Europe,  and 
the  dawn  of  the  new  Century  saw  multitudes  of  men  and 
women  forsaking  wife  and  husband,  children  and  friends, 
lands  and  houses,  and  fleeing  to  the  monasteries  to  prepare 
for  the  Coming  of  the  Lord.  The  year  one  thousand  came 
and  went, — and  the  Lord  did  not  come. 

But  what  did  come  was  a  new  world.  The  belief  that  the 
Coming  of  Jesus  was  the  safety  of  the  world  inspired  men 
with  a  desire  to  make  the  world  a  decent  place  for  Jesus  to 


374        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

come  to.  l^The  monastery,  absorbing  as  it  did  the  best  men 
and  women  of  the  race,  became  the  source  of  order  and 
culture  to  the  world.j 

The  next  two  centuries  were  the  golden  centuries  of 
Western  Christendom.  The  belief  in  the  Second  Coming  of 
Jesus  inspired  men  to  build  in  his  name,  and  in  the  name  of 
his  Virgin  mother,  shrines  of  impressive  beauty  and  sublim- 
ity,— and  to  create  the  greatest  order  of  architecture,  save 
one,  that  man  has  ever  used  in  building  the  houses  of  his  gods. 
This  enthusiasm  inspired  an  hymnody  unsurpassed  in  sacred 
song.  The  "Dies  Irae"  and  "Jerusalem  the  Golden"  were 
sung  by  pilgrims  as  they  went  from  saintly  shrine  to  saintly 
shrine,  seeking  the  intercession  of  the  saint  to  save  them  from 
the  wrath  of  God  on  the  day  of  his  coming. 

The  outcome  of  this  concentration  of  human  energy  in  the 
monastery  was  the  acquisition  by  the  monastery  of  political 
power  and  material  riches.  At  the  end  of  the  Thirteenth 
Century  the  monks  not  only  ruled  Europe,  they  owned  it. 
One-third  of  the  land  of  Europe  was  in  their  possession  and 
one-third  of  the  labor.  ^  Riches  and  power  corrupted  the 
monastery  as  they  had  corrupted  the  Primitive  Church,  and 
in  the  first  three  years  of  the  Fifteenth  Century  the  monastic 
system  went  down  with  a  crash."\ 

The  modern  era  may  be  roughly  dated  from  the  year  1403, 
— when  Boniface  VIII  excommunicated  Philip  IV  of  France, 
and  Philip  defied  the  Pope.  In  this  quarrel  the  Papacy  was 
routed  and  the  age  of  pietism  came  to  an  end-  The 
monasteries  were  given  over  to  the  spoliations  of  the  young- 
er sons  of  the  nobility  The  more  intelligent  of  the  clergy 
threw  their  missals  into  the  discard,  abandoned  the  reading 
of  St  Thomas,  and  gave  themselves  to  the  watching  of  the 
heavens, — not  for  the  Second  Coming  of  Jesus,  but  to  note 
the  movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies  which  were  there 
and  always  had  been  there.  The  priests,  the  popes,  and  the 
princes,  leaving  the  nuns  and  the  rustics  to  watch  for  the 
coming  of  Jesus,  took  vengeance  on  their  past  austerities  by 
plunging  into  every  excess  of  sensual  indulgence;  they 
sought  the  woods  not  to  shun  but  to  embrace  the  satyrs.  This 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  375 

present  world  laughed  and  jeered  and  danced  the  heavenly 
world  out  of  existence.  Man's  life  lay  not  in  the  denial  but 
in  the  enjoyment  of  his  desires,  to  eat  and  drink  and  love  and 
fight  was  the  highest  aspiration  of  that  age. 

The  revival  of  religion  consequent  upon  the  Protestant 
Reformation  brought  back  a  belief  in  the  Second  Coming  of 
Jesus-  But  the  purpose  of  that  coming  was  not,  as  in  prim- 
itive and  medieval  theology,  to  restore  the  Kingdom  to  the 
spiritual  Israel.  It  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  social  order; 
Jesus  came  not  to  inaugurate  a  revolution  but  to  hold  a  court. 
He  was  to  sit  in  the  seat  of  judgment,  and  all  the  living  were 
to  stand  before  him  and  all  the  dead  of  all  the  ages  were  to 
come  from  their  graves  naked  and  shivering,  like  felons  from 
their  cells,  to  hear  their  doom.  One  by  one,  as  their  names 
were  called,  they  were  to  stand  at  the  bar  and  receive  their 
sentence.  "  According  to  the  Calvinistic  theory,  their  fate 
had  been  determined  long  before  they  appeared  in  this  open 
court  God  himself  in  his  absolute  sovereignty  had  pre- 
determined the  destiny  of  each  individual  soul,  electing  some 
to  salvation  and  some  to  damnation,  and  that  his  judgment 
might  be  justified,  he  caused  the  sinner  to  sin,  and  gave  his 
righteousness  to  the  righteous.  ^ 

This  grotesque  belief  in  the  Day  of  Judgment  that  pre- 
vailed in  the  Seventeenth  Century  was  dissolved  by  the  ra- 
tionalism of  the  Eighteenth  Century  and  was  finally  made 
forever  impossible  by  the  conception  of  the  universe  that 
mastered  the  minds  of  thinking  men  and  women  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century. 

With  spasmodic  revivals,  the  belief  in  the  Second  Coming 
of  Jesus  has  ceased  to  be  an  active  belief  in  the  churches,  it 
now  serves  as  the  distinctive  doctrine  of  an  obscure  sect 
called  the  Adventists,  the  great  body  of  Christian  people 
holding  it  simply  as  a  survival.  The  preacher  in  All  Saints 
Cathedral  did  not  believe  it ;  his  hearers  did  not  believe  it.  In 
fact,  a  devout  person  shrinks  with  a  sort  of  horror  from  the 
thought  of  the  coming  of  Jesus  at  the  present  time  after  the 
conception  of  the  primitive  and  medieval  church.  Think  of 
jthe  headlines  in  the  morning  newspapers  announcing  his  de- 


376        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

scent  upon  the  Mount  of  Olives,  of  the  interviews  to  which 
he  would  be  subjected  by  the  modern  reporter,  of  his  dese- 
cration to  the  base  uses  of  the  moving  picture,  and  be  thank- 
ful that  he  must  still  abide  in  his  secret  place! 

And  why  should  he  come?  Has  he  not  suffered  enough? 
Must  he  be  dragged  forth  to  look  upon  the  failure  of  his  mis- 
sion and  the  ruin  of  Christendom  i|  On  that  day  in  1914  when  ) 
the  nations  of  Christendom  rose  up  in  fratricidal  strife,  and 
called  in  the  heathen  from  Asia  and  Africa  to  aid  them  in 
their  mutual  slaughter,  the  Christian  era  came  to  its  end,  and 
Christendom  ceased  to  exist.  A  new  era  dates  from  that  day ; 
a  new  world  is  emerging  from  that  conflict. 

Christendom  was  the  product  of  economic,  social,  political, 
and  emotional  forces  working  in  the  Mediterranean  Basin 
V  from  the  Tenth  Century  B.  C.  to  the  Fifteenth  Century  A.  D. 
During  that  period  the  shores  of  the  Middle  Sea  were  the 
seat  of  Western  civilization.  In  the  earlier  period  of  this  era, 
Tyre,  at  the  extreme  East,  was  the  center  of  commercial  ex- 
changes; at  a  later  period  this  center  moved  west  to  Carthage; 
in  the  Roman  period,  to  Alexandria;  in  the  medieval 
period  Venice  was  the  center  of  commercial  exchanges  and 
the  Lombards  the  bankers  of  Europe.  Christianity  is  the 
religion  which  was  the  final  outcome  of  the  creative  forces  of 
that  world.  It  derives  its  religious  element  from  Judea,  its 
theology  from  Greece,  and  its  political  organization  from 
Rome.  This  religion  has  as  its  characteristics  the  exclusive- 
ness  of  Judaism,  the  intellectual  subtlety  of  Greece,  and  the 
political  tyranny  of  Rome. 

\-~After  the  downfall  of  the  Roman  empire  Europe  was  uni- 
fied by  this  religion.  The  barbarian  from  the  North  fell 
under  the  spell  of  the  people  whom  he  conquered.  This  union 
of  the  energetic  mind  of  the  Teuton  with  the  subtle  intel- 
ligence of  the  Latin  gave  being  to  modern  civilization;  the 
expanding  forces  of  that  civilization  are  Teutonic ;  the 
molding  forces  are  Latin.  During  the  early  formative  period 
of  this  era  the  Latin  element  cast  the  Germanic  mind  in  its 
religious  mold.  This  religion  took  over  from  Judaism  its 
exclusiveness.  The  Christian  God  was  the  only  God ;  the 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  377 

Christian  religion  the  only  religion.  All  outside  the  pale  of 
Christianity  were  infidels,  and  by  that  circumstance  subject 
to  the  wrath  of  God-  When  a  Christian  met  a  heathen  he 
either  converted  him  or  told  him  to  go  to  hell.  The  conse- 
quence was  a  Christendom  separated  from  the  rest  of  man- 
kind not  so  much  by  social  and  political  as  by  religious 
barriers. 

The  thought  of  Christendom  was  unified  by  a  system  of 
dogma  that  was  the  product  of  the  Greek  mind.  The  Geek 
mind  was  short  on  observation  and  long  on  definition-  The 
Greek  evolved  a  beautiful  language,  and  then  fell  in  love  with 
his  words.  Always  on  the  verge  of  great  discoveries,  he  lost 
himself  in  the  maze  of  his  definitions.  /The  religion  of  Jesus 
was  a  way  of  life  to  Jesus ;  under  the  influence  of  the  Greek 
mind  it  became  a  mode  of  thought,— the  energy  of  the  church 
for  four  centuries  being  expended  in  an  effort  not  to  serve 
God  but  to  define  him.  \ 

The  religious  exclusiveness  of  the  Hebrew  and  the  in- 
tellectual definition  of  the  Greek  were  organized  into  a 
political  system  by  the  Roman  lawyers  for  the  government 
of  the  Western  world-  This  completed  the  unification  of 
Christendom.  There  was  one  God,  one  Creed,  one  Church, 
and  this  was  the  God,  the  Creed,  and  the  Church  of  the  Medi- 
terranean Basin.  Rome  was  its  political  and  religious  capital, 
Florence  its  intellectual  center,  and  Venice  the  center  of  its 
commercial  exchanges. 

This  unity  received  its  first  vicious  blow  not,  as  one  might 
expect,  from  the  fulminations  of  an  heretic,  but  from  the  for- 
tuitous voyage  of  a  sailor.  Christopher  Columbus,  a  devout 
Catholic,  sailed  westward  and  discovered  a  new  continent. 
One  of  the  consequences  of  that  discovery  was  the  loss  of 
Christian  unity.  Vasco  Da  Gama,  inspired  by  the  voyage  of 
Columbus,  circumnavigated  the  Continent  of  Africa,  and  op- 
ened a  water  way  to  Bombay,  the  immediate  effect  of  which 
was  to  transfer  the  center  of  commercial  exchanges  from 
Venice  to  Lisbon.  This  center  passed  on  from  Lisbon  to 
Amsterdam  and  from  Amsterdam  to  London-  The  Mediter- 
ranean Basin  was  no  longer  the  highway  of  commerce.  This 


378        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

change  of  the  center  of  exchanges  was  followed  by  political 
and  religious  upheavals.  The  north  of  Europe  renounced 
its  dependence  on  the  South.  The  so-called  Protestant  Re- 
formation was  the  chief  consequence  of  this  revolution. 

Christendom  was  divided  into  two  hostile  sections,  Catholic 
and  Protestant  and  the  Protestant  section  into  a  dozen  war- 
ring sects.  Each  of  these  divisions  and  sects  carried  over 
from  the  parent  body  its  whole  equipment  of  Judaic  exclusive- 
ness,  Greek  subtlety,  and  Roman  tyranny;  and  each  section 
set  about  the  colossal  task  not  only  of  converting  all  the 
heathen  but  of  converting  as  well  the  members  of  all  other 
churches  and  sects-  In  neither  enterprise  has  any  of  these 
churches  or  sects  been  eminently  successful. 

This  division  of  Christendom  was  exceedingly  favorable  to 
freedom  of  thought  in  Europe,  and  the  scientific  movement 
gained  a  headway  that  enabled  it  to  free  itself  from  ecclesi- 
astical control.  In  this  universe  of  science  there  is  no  place 
for  any  throne  of  God,  no  seat  for  his  government.  What- 
ever God  there  be  is  everywhere  or  nowhere.  It  is  the  thought 
of  science  that  has  made  unbelievable  the  creed  of  the  Church- 
It  was  because  the  preacher  and  the  people  in  All  Saints 
Cathedral  were  subconsciously  possessed  by  the  scientific 
mind  that  they  were  not  interested  in  the  story  of  Jesus'  Ascen- 
sion and  gave  to  his  second  coming  no  second  thought. 

The  human  mind  no  longer  occupies  itself  with  Church 
dogma ;  it  is  eagerly  engaged  in  the  pursuit  of  scientific  truth. 
Withdrawing  itself  from  the  ecclesiastical  control,  it  has  gone 
on  from  acquisition  to  acquisition,  until  it  has  come  to  have 
a  well-rounded  conception  of  the  universe  in  which  it  finds 
itself.  This  conception  is  based  not  on  any  divine  revelation 
but  upon  human  investigation  and  reasoning.  During  the 
scientific  era  knowledge  has  been  secularized.  Christian 
dogma  is  the  exclusive  possession  of  the  Christian  Church ; 
scientific  knowledge  is  the  common  property  of  all  mankind. 
It  depends  for  its  validity  not  upon  the  decree  of  any  pope 
or  council,  but  upon  the  affirmation  of  the  human  intelligence. 
Nothing  is  true  for  the  mind  of  man  which  the  mind  of  man 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  379 

may  not  verify.  It  were  absurd  to  call  this  system  of  know- 
ledge "Christian."  Science  has  destroyed  the  foundations  of 
Christian  dogma,  and  so  far  as  knowledge  is  concerned 
Christendom  has  ceased  to  exist.  J 

With  the  secularization  of  knowledge  has  gone  the  secular- 
ization of  art  and  recreation.  Christian  art  occupied  as  it 
was  with  the  Christian  mythos,  has  passed  away  with  that 
mythos.  Architects  to-day  are  not  engaged  in  the  building 
of  Cathedrals,  nor  are  the  artists  painting  the  pictures  of 
Virgin  and  Saints.  The  architect  is  busy  with  the  problem 
of  the  office,  the  warehouse,  the  factory,  the  theater,  and 
the  public  hall-  The  artist  finds  his  inspiration  not  in  the 
dreams  of  the  Church  but  in  the  direct  vision  of  nature.  He 
pictures  the  dawn  and  the  setting  sun  as  his  eye  sees  them ; 
the  models  he  uses  are  neither  the  anchorites  of  the  cell  nor 
the  nun  of  the  cloister  but  the  peasant  in  the  field,  the  woman 
in  the  home,  and  children  playing  in  the  streets.  Modern  art 
is  in  no  sense  Christian:  it  is  natural,  unsectarian,  and  interna- 
tional. The  bold  execution  of  the  West  wins  the  admiration 
of  the  East  and  the  delicate  handling  of  the  East  charms  the 
imagination  of  the  West  Christian  art  has  had  its  day.  We 
preserve  its  treasures,  but  its  divinities  no  longer  inspire  the 
artist.  The  only  God  whom  the  artist  worships  is  the  God 
of  Beauty  whose  presence  is  seen  in  every  land  and  on  every 
sea. 

During  the  primitive  and  medieval  periods  Christian  peo- 
ple found  their  recreation  in  the  Christian  Church.  In  the 
earlier  period  the  slave  escaped  from  the  dreariness  of  his 
drudgery  to  recreate  his  soul  in  the  vital  air  of  the  Christian 
community ;  his  soul  was  stirred  from  its  sluggishness  by  the 
eloquence  of  the  preacher  and  was  swept  along  on  the  song  of 
the  congregation.  In  medieval  times  the  church  was  the 
place  of  common  amusement.  Not  only  were  the  pageants 
of  the  church  the  entertainment  of  the  masses,  but  the  clergy 
as  actors  gave  theatrical  performances  to  delight  the  people. 
The  miracle  plays  of  the  Church  are  the  source  of  modern 
drama.  The  Protestant  Reformation  put  an  end  to  all  this, 
and  in  London  and  elsewhere  the  actors  were  driven  from 


380        THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

the  precincts  of  the  cathedrals  to  take  refuge  in  such  places 
as  the  Bankside, — where  harlots  and  thieves  had  their  haunts, 
— and  in  such  rich  soil  was  grown  the  greatest  dramatic 
genius  the  world  has  ever  known.  Since  the  days  of  Shake- 
speare the  theater  has  been  of  the  world,  worldly,  and  the 
Church  has  feared  and  hated  it  as  its  deadly  enemy.  As  a 
consequence,  all  recreation  has  been  secularized ;  Gods  and 
angels  no  longer  occupy  the  stage:  it  is  to  study  the  passions 
of  men  and  women  that  men  and  women  resort  to  the  theater. 

The  Catholic  Church  stills  holds  the  people  by  the  splendor 
of  its  ceremonies  and  the  charm  of  its  music;  but  the  appeal 
to  the  senses  alone  cannot  mould  the  life.  It  is  only  when  the 
intelligence  justifies  the  senses  that  the  soul  can  be  stirred 
to  fear  or  to  admiration.  The  ceremonies  of  the  Catholic 
Church  have  lost  their  power  to  hold  the  intelligence  because 
they  have  lost  their  reality ;  the  world  that  they  picture  has 
passed  away  and  they  cannot  compete  to-day  with  the  moving 
picture,  with  its  crude  representations  of  the  crude  realities 
of  the  world  as  it  is. 

But  the  greatest  disaster  that  has  befallen  Christendom  is 
the  secularization  of  the  revolution.  The  primitive  and 
monastic  church  preached,  sang,  and  practiced  the  revolu- 
tion- Its  gospel  was  good  news  to  the  poor.  It  lifted  the 
beggar  from  the  dunghill  and  sat  him  with  the  princes  of  the 
people;  its  aristocracy  was  an  aristocracy  of  merit;  it  abol- 
ished the  tyranny  of  property;  it  gave  to  the  lowest  of  man- 
kind the  priceless  gift  of  personal  dignity;  it  promised  men 
redemption  from  poverty  here  and  now,  and  what  it  promised, 
to  the  extent  of  its  ability,  it  gave.  In  the  primitive  church 
and  in  the  monastery  no  man  was  allowed  to  say  that  aught 
of  the  things  that  he  possessed  was  his  own  but  they  had  all 
things  in  common.  But  modern  Christianity  has  no  such 
doctrine.  Since  the  Reformation  the  churches  have  been 
saying  to  the  people : 

"If  you  will  be  good  and  order  yourself  lowly  and  rever- 
ently to  all  your  betters;  if  you  will  consent  to  go  hungry 
and  thirsty,  naked  and  houseless,  languish  in  sickness  and 
in  prison  in  this  life,  then  we  promise  you  in  abundance 


0 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  381 

heavenly  manna,  the  water  of  life,  white  robes,  palms,  and 
crowns,  the  company  of  God  and  angels,  after  you  are  dead." 

The  economic  equality  which  is  denied  men  on  earth  is 
lavished  upon  them  in  heaven-  In  this  way  religious  sanction 
has  been  given  by  priests  and  preachers  of  the  Christian 
Church  to  the  most  iniquitous  system  of  economic  exploita- 
tion that  has  ever  existed  among  men.  Because  of  this,  the 
preaching  of  the  revolutionary  gospel  of  Jesus  has  been  taken 
from  the  Christian  clergy  and  given  to  the  outcast  people 
themselves.  Not  the  British  clergy  but  the  British  Labor 
Party  has  formulated  the  program  for  the  reconstruction  of 
the  world.  That  vast,  involuntary,  unnecessary  poverty  that 
the  modern  industrial  system  has  produced,  that  modern 
Christian  governments  have  legalized  and  modern  Christian 
churches  justified,  has  renounced  Christianity ;  it  knows  no 
creed ;  it  only  knows  its  own  misery ;  it  is  rising  everywhere 
to  abolish  its  poverty  or  to  wreck  the  world.  It  can  wait  no 
longer  for  the  second  coming  of  Jesus.  For  the  revolution 
Christendom  has  no  existence.  Humanity  is  coming  to  the 
rescue  of  Humanity. 

With  the  passing  of  the  belief  in  the  Second  Coming  of 
Jesus,  goes  the  whole  structure  of  Christian  theology,  the 
paraphernalia  of  Christian  worship,  and  the  right  of  the 
Christian  clergy  to  the  teaching  office.  Out  of  this  wreck- 
age there  is  only  one  salvage,  and  that  is  the  Humanity 
of  Jesus.  And  it  is  this  Humanity  of  Jesus  that  has  judged 
the  Christian  Church,  the  Christian  nations,  the  Christian 
industrial  methods,  and  condemned  them-  Jesus  gave  the  of- 
fice of  Judge  on  the  Day  of  Judgment  not  to  any  God  or  to 
any  Son  of  God  but  to  the  Son  of  Man.  It  is  Humanity  that 
is  the  final  judge  of  all  that  relates  to  the  life  of  Humanity. 
All  institutions, — religious,  political,  social,  and  industrial, — 
are  on  trial  in  this  Court  of  Humanity.  Humanity  creates  such 
institutions;  and  so  long  as  they  serve  the  well-being  of  the 
race,  Humanity  permits  them  to  stand.  When  they  fail 
utterly  to  be  useful,  Humanity  throws  them  aside  and  creates 
new  machinery  to  carry  on  its  work.  All  institutions  are 
subject  to  the  law  of  growth  and  decay :  When  they  have 


382  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

grown  old  and  useless  they  cumber  the  ground  and  then  the 
axe  is  laid  at  the  root  of  the  tree,  and  the  tree  that  beareth 
not  good  fruit  is  cut  down  and  cast  into  the  fire. 

The  weakness  of  the  Christian  Church  is  largely  the  fault 
of  its  age.  .The  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  a  survival  in  the 
modern  world  of  the  Roman  Empire.  It  uses  the  Latin 
language ;  its  priests  are  dressed  in  the  fashion  of  the  Roman 
gentleman  of  the  Third  Century;  it  thinks  as  the  Romans 
thought  when  they  were  still  the  imperial  race.  But  all  this 
has  passed  away  never  to  return.  The  Latin  language  is  dead 
and  in  process  of  burial;  the  fashions  of  the  Third  Century 
are  passe,  and  imperialism  is  no  longer  in  favor  with  the  peo- 
ple. A  great  war  has  just  been  fought  to  put  an  end  to  it. 

The  Protestant  churches  are  not  so  old  as  the  Latin  Church, 
but  they  have  less  vitality.  They  are  the  representatives  of 
European  nationalisms  and  modern  class  distinctions.  They 
are  provincial,  and  can  make  no  universal  appeal  to  mankind- 
A  divided,  discordant  Christendom  cannot  hope  to  convert 
the  world.  It  must  be  clear  to  every  man  of  vision  that  the 
mission  of  the  Christian  Church  to  the  heathen  world  is  a 
failure.  The  great  masses  of  non-Christian  people  can  never 
now  be  converted  to  Christianity ;  nor  can  the  Catholic  Church 
be  reconciled  with  Protestantism ;  nor  the  various  Protestant 
bodies  be  unified ;  nor  will  the  vast  mass  of  unchurched  people 
ever  return  to  the  Church.  The  Church  is  the  product  of 
spent  forces.  Humanity,  which  existed  for  ages  before  the 
Christian  era  and  will  continue  to  exist  for  ages  to  come, — 
now  that  the  Christian  era  has  passed  into  history, — is  en- 
gaged in  building  for  the  future-  The  world  is  in  revolution : 
institutions  which  had  their  origin  in  later  barbarism  and  early 
ci\ilization  are  falling  into  ruin;  the  family,  in  which  civiliza- 
tion had  its  origin,  is  in  process  of  dissolution.  The  liberation 
and  emancipation  of  woman  has  destroyed  that  dominance 
of  the  male  which  was  the  cornerstone  of  the  ancient  famil}'. 
Woman  now  does  not  belong  to  any  man, — not  to  her  father, 
still  less  to  her  husband ;  she  owns  herself,  and  is  an  integral 
element  in  the  body  politic. 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  383 

The  rise  of  the  working  class  from  the  condition  of  serv- 
itude, which  has  been  its  lot  from  the  beginning  of  human 
industry  to  the  present  age,  has  changed  the  structure  of 
society ;  the  relation  of  master  and  slave  no  longer  exists ; 
the  slaves  have  not  only  secured  their  own  freedom,  but  are 
taking  over  the  political  control  of  the  world. 

Europe  has  lost  the  political,  intellectual,  and  religious 
leadership  of  mankind,  and  is  now  dependent  on  America  and 
Asia.  The  center  of  exchanges  is  shifting  from  London  to  New 
York.  Competition  is  giving  place  to  cooperation.  The 
great  war  just  ended  has  shaken  the  old  civilization  from  its 
foundations  and  made  necessary  the  rebuilding  of  society. 

The  Christian  religion,  with  its  Judaic  exclusiveness,  its 
Greek  subtlety,  and  its  Roman  tyranny,  is  inadequate  to  the 
spiritual  necessities  of  the  present  age  and  the  age  to  come. 
"Creation !"  is  the  watchword  of  the  old  time,  "Evolution !" 
of  the  new.  God  is  no  longer  on  his  Throne,  he  is  in  his 
workshop.  He  is  incarnate  not  only  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth  but 
in  every  creature  that  creeps  and  crawls  and  walks  upon  the 
earth.  The  universe  is  ruled  not  by  power  external  to  itself 
but  by  power  within  itself,  the  force  that  holds  it  together 
lies  not  in  the  mighty  sun  but  in  the  minute  atom.  It  is  this 
sovereignty  of  the  atom  that  is  transforming  the  political, 
industrial,  and  the  social  world.  It  is  the  coming  to  con- 
sciousness of  the  human  atoms  that  has  caused  the  downfall 
of  the  ancient  order  and  is  to  build  up  the  new-  The  peace 
and  prosperity  of  mankind  is  no  longer  in  the  power  of  gov- 
ernments; it  has  come  into  the  control  of  the  people. 

Certain  elderly  gentlemen  of  the  old  order,  not  aware  of 
this  change,  have  been  busy  in  Paris  trying  to  restore  the 
Humpty-Dumpty  of  nationalism  to  its  place  on  the  wall.  They 
have  made  a  peace,  which  is  no  peace,  and  a  League  of  Na- 
tions that  leaves  the  nations  as  they  are  each  with  its  naval 
and  military  establishment,  to  impoverish  an  already  im- 
poverished people.  The  motive  of  this  peace  is  Vae  Victis. 
New  wars  lurk  in  it-  Bleeding  Europe  may  hardly  staunch 
her  wounds  before  she  must  bleed  again. 

•— t    ^^rx-vAxx?   ^  \''^\  \  '-\   l^    V-\  \  r-£--     ,~A-~.^ 


384       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

But  the  future  is  not  within  the  keeping  of  these  politic- 
ians; their  treaties  and  their  League  of  Nations  are  but  the 
last  gasps  of  the  Old  Order.  A  new  era,  which  does  not 
know  these  politicians,  is  at  hand.  Emerson  speaking  of 
civilization  said:  "We  are  not  at  its  meridian  but  only  at  the 
cock-crowing  and  the  morning  star."  A  cosmic  hour  has 
passed  since  then,  and  our  Eastern  skies  are  reddening  with 
the  angry  dawn  of  the  new  day.  f  It  is  not  in  the  West  that 
the  sun  rises  but  in  the  East.  It  behooves  the  watchman  1o 
fix  his  gaze  not  on  Paris  but  on  Pekin  and  Moscow.^ 

In  this  new  day  that  is  dawning  there  will  be  work  for 
every  man,  woman  and  child.  We  must  restore  the  waste 
places  and  build  up  the  tabernacles  of  the  gods  that  have 
broken  down.  We  will  have  to  recover  our  sense  of  the  divine 
in  nature.  Cardinal  Newman  said  that  if  we  had  faith  we 
might  see  an  angel  of  God  in  every  flower;  and  that  was  the 
faith  possessed  by  every  pagan  boy  and  girl;  they  were 
taught  to  see  a  divinity  in  every  blooming  bush,  to  feel  it  in 
every  blowing  wind,  and  to  hear  it  in  the  music  of  running 
water.  These  Gods  of  old,  compounded  as  they  are  of  sun- 
light and  the  rain,  have  lost  for  us  their  divinity  in  their 
commonness-  Because  the  sunlight  falls  with  equal  blessing 
upon  the  high  and  the  lowly,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  evil 
and  the  good,  and  because  the  rain  is  rainingr  somewhere 
every  day,  these  are  but  sunlight  and  rain  to  us  and  form  the 
theme  of  our  daily  complaining.  We  say  of  the  sunlight  that 
it  is  hot  and  glaring,  and  of  the  rain  that  it  is  cold  and  wet; 
and  we  never  worship  these  (as  our  pagan  fathers  did)  as 
the  embodiment  of  the  Living  Force  which  gives  to  us  our 
life. 

And  we  must  proceed  from  a  recovered  sense  of  the  divin- 
ity of  nature  to  restore  our  belief  in  the  divinity  of  man.  We 
have  been  taught  to  believe  in  the  divinity  of  Christ;  and  was 
not  Jesus,  the  son  of  Joseph,  who  was  called  Christ,  a  man; 
and  if  Jesus  was  divine,  why  not  you  or  I?  Too  long  have 
we  suffered  the  Church  to  slander  man, — to  call  him  fallen 
and  depraved.  Man  has  stumbled,  but  he  has  never  fallen- 
In  pain  and  sorrow  he  has  made  his  way  up  the  steep  ascents 


THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS  385 

of  life  from  the  amebse  to  the  man.  No  God  from  without 
has  helped  him;  it  is  the  God  within  him  that  has  won  the 
victory. 

It  has  been  my  lot  for  more  than  seventy  years  to  live  very 
close  to  the  heart  of  humanity ;  and  if  any  man  says  to  me 
that  that  heart  is  deceitful  above  all  things  and  desperately 
wicked,  I  say  such  a  man  speaks  evil  of  the  good-  It  is  not 
the  wickedness  but  the  essential  goodness  of  the  human  heart 
that  has  been  my  wonder.  That  heart  is  often  corrupted  by 
riches  and  high  place  and  power;  it  is  often  hurt  by  poverty 
and  bad  treatment,  but  that  heart  as  a  heart  is  sound  to  the 
core,  and  all  the  salvation  that  has  ever  come  to  man  has 
come  to  him  from  the  human  heart. 

Because  man  is  divine,  his  labor  is  sacred;  his  strength  is 
as  the  strength  of  a  God.  It  is  this  sacredness  of  human  labor 
that  condemns  our  present  industrial  system  as  sacrilege- 
Human  labor  is  not  something  to  buy  and  sell  in  the  market, 
— to  put  to  base  uses  in  making  gauds  for  women  and  intox- 
icants for  man.  No  human  labor  can  be  wasted ;  every  exer- 
tion of  it  is  needed  to  furnish  forth  the  necessities  of  life. 
Every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  world  is  entitled  to  a 
sufficiency  of  good  food  and  pure  water,  to  beautiful  clothing 
and  dignified  shelter.  Until  these  are  supplied  to  all,  any 
expenditure  of  labor  on  useless  things  is  a  sin  against  the 
sacredness  of  labor;  and  when  these  essentials  are  supplied, 
labor  should  cease  and  every  man  enjoy  his  leisure- 

In  the  new  day  man  must  recover  the  freedom  of  his  soul 
and  his  intelligence;  the  right  to  think  and  the  right  to  the 
full  expression  of  thought  is  not  only  essential  to  the  well- 
being  of  the  personal  soul,  it  is  a  necessity  of  society ;  without 
such  freedom  society  stagnates  and  dies  of  its  own  impurities. 
Institutions  are  the  foes  of  intellectual  freedom,  because  free 
thought  is  the  dissolvent  of  institutions.  As  Emerson  has 
said :  "When  a  thinker  is  born  all  things  are  at  risk."  It  is 
the  fatal  error  of  the  Church  that  it  has  tried  to  give  per- 
manence and  universality  to  creeds-  But  creeds j^are  opinions, 
and  opinions  change;  creeds  are  opinions,  and  opinions  differ. 
Opinions  are  the  clothing  of  the  intelligence,  and  the  man  who 


386       THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

does  not  change  his  opinions  is  all  one  with  the  man  who 
does  not  change  his  shirt.  Such  intellectual  uncleanliness 
breeds  the  foul  diseases  of  spiritual  pride,  fanaticism,  bigotry, 
and  intolerance.  As  for  me,  it  has  long  been  my  habit  to  give  my 
intelligence  a  bath  every  morning  and  to  send  my  opinions  to 
the  wash  once  a  week. 

And  what  shall  we  say  more?  Shall  we  speak  of  Death 
in  the  New  Era  and  what  is  to  come  after  Death?  Not  now. 
Death  is  every  man's  private  business,  and  he  may  think  of  it 
as  he  will.  He  cannot  avoid  it,  and  when  it  comes  it  will 
solve  its  own  problems.  xLet  us  discharge  our  minds  of  the 
thought  that  we  cannot  see  whatever  Gods  there  be  until  after 
we  die.  If  we  do  not  see  these  Divinities  before  that  event, 
I  trow  we  shall  never  see  them  at  all. 


\A 


The  Living  Gods 


M 


THE  LIVING  GODS. 

en  tell  me  that  the  Gods  are  dead, 

As  leaves  of  yesteryear. 
From  out  their  forms  their  souls  are  fled 

The  skies  weep  o'er  their  bier. 

They  tell  me  that  Varuna's  gone 

From  out  the  midnight  sky. 
His  children  stars  all  fruitless  moan 

Within  his  arms  to  lie. 

They  tell  me  that  the  Hours  of  Day 

No  more  can  happy  be. 
Since  their  God  Chronos  went  away 

They  are  mere  chronology. 

They  tell  me  that  the  Steeds  of  Light, 
No  more  the  darkness  follow. 

No  more  they  burst  the  bars  of  night 
Hard  driven  by  Apollo. 

They  even  say  at  break  of  day 

Athena  cannot  come. 
Her  mist  like  form,  her  breath  of  spray 

Is  melted  by  the  sun. 

They  tell  me  Zeus  no  longer  sits 

Enthroned  among  his  fellows ; 
But  round  that  throne  the  night  wind  flits 

And  there  the  storm  cloud  bellows. 

They  say  Jehovah  comes  no  more 

On  social  service  bent, 
To  sit  cross-legged  at  the  door 

Of  good  old  Abram's  tent. 


They  say  that  Jesus  Christ  is  dead, 

And  buried  long  ago. 
The  race  of  man  he  has  not  saved, 

Nor  healed  a  single  woe. 

They  say  that  Mary's  radiant  star 

No  longer  lights  the  sea. 
The  iron  laws  of  nature  bar 

Her  true  virginity. 

They  tell  me  all  the  Gods  are  dead; 

Not  one  of  them  is  left. 
The  very  race  itself  is  sped. 

Of  Gods  the  earth's  bereft. 

But  let  men  tell  me  what  they  will, 

I  know  it  is  not  true 
I  know  the  Gods  are  with  us  still 

To  them  our  love  is  due. 

I  know  the  stars  all  com'fy  lie 

Wirhin  Varuna's  arms; 
He  walks  with  them  about  the  sky 

And  still  their  wild  alarms. 

I  know  the  jocund  Hours  of  Day 
Still  dance  from  sheer  delight, 

And  turn  their  faces  every  way 
To  keep  their  God  in  sight. 

I  know  Apollo's  gallant  steeds 
Still  come  at  break  of  day. 

Upon  the  dark  their  swiftness  feeds 
And  eats  the  night  away. 


I  know  that  with  the  graying  dawn 

Athena's  cooling  breath 
Brings  healing  to  the  fevered  one 

And  shuts  the  gates  of  death. 

I  know  that  Zeus  in  heat  of  noon 
Seeks  Leda's  cloud  cool  bower 

And  there  dissolved  in  lover's  swoon 
Pours  down  in  golden  shower. 

I  know  that  when  the  skies  are  black 
With   wraiths   of  monstrous   form 

That  fly  before  the  wind  wild  wrack 
Jehovah  rides  the  storm. 

I  know  that  Jesus  Christ  is  ris'n 
And  is  at  Man's  right  hand, 

And   there   for  every  creature   wiz'n 
As  suppliant  doth  stand. 

I  know  that  Mary's  kindly  light 

Still  leads  the  sailor  home. 
By  nature   'tis  the  woman's   right 

To  rescue  men  that  roam. 

Yes,  yes,  the  Gods  are  all  alive, 

Not  one  of  them  is  dead. 
In  faithful  hearts  they  still  do  thrive 

In  spite  of  all  that's  said. 

They  are  each  the  weaving  of  the  ONE 

That  knows  nor  wrong  nor  right, 
On  whose  eternal  loom  is  run 

0 

All  Gods  both  dark  and  bright. 


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Charles    Scribner's   Sons,    1878-89. 

SOPHOCLES,     CEdipus  Tyrannus.     New  York:     D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1852. 

SPENCER,  HERKEBT.    The  Data  of  Ethics.    New  York :  D.  Appleton  &  Co., 

1879. 

Ceremonial  Institutions.     New  York:     D.  Appleton  &  Co.,   1880. 

SPENCER,    EDMUND.     The    Faerie    Queene.     London :     G.    Routledge    & 
Sons,  1869. 

STRAUSS,  DAVID  F.     Das  Leben  Jesu.     Leipzig:     F.  A.  Brockhaus,  1864. 
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TACITUS,  CORNELIUS.    Annals.    Bohn  Translation. 
Gcrmania.    Bohn  Translation. 

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General  Works.     New  York:     Harper  &  Brothers,  1868. 

THEOCRITUS.     Poems  (Lang  Translation).     London:  T.  &  T  Clark,  1880. 

TOLSTOI,    L.    N.     My   Confession.     My  Religion.      What   Men   Live   By. 
New   York:     Charles   Scribner's   Sons,   1902. 

TYLOR,  EDWARD  B.     Primitive  Culture.     New   York:   Henry   Holt  &  Co. 
1889. 

Anthropology.    London:     Macmillan  and  Co.,  1881. 
Natural  History  of  Religion. 

TYNDALL,  JOHN.     Advancement  of  Science.     New  York:     A.  K.   Butts 
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396  THE  WAYS  OF  THE  GODS 

VIRGIL.    Eclogues.    Boston:  Ginn  &  Co.,  1895. 

Georgics.     New  York:     Harper  &  Brothers,  1863. 
London  :    Ellis  &  White,  1876. 


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WELLHAUSEN,  J.    Sketch  of  the  History  of  Israel  and  Judah.    London  : 
A.  &  C.  Black,  1891. 

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INDEX 


Abiathar,   105 

Abraham :    100.    101 ;    Jehovah,   the 

friend    God    of,     108    et  seq.; 

character  of,   109  et  seq.;   113, 
.118,   135,   153,   161,  260 
Absolute:   identification  of  Jehovah 

with    the,    of    Plato,   228,   229; 

coming    of    the,    230    et    seq.; 

clash  of  Professor  James  and 

Professor   Royce   on    the,  230- 

236,   passim;   Christus,   Son   of 

the,  237,  248;  252,  266 
Actium,   196 

Adam,   19,   114,   153,  265,  330 
Adrian  of  Utrecht,  292 
/^schylus,  316 
Agassiz,  Louis,  cited  on  the  archi- 

typal    plan    of    creation,    329 
Agrippina,  162 
Ahana,  53 
Ahaz,    132 
Alaric,  251,  252 
Albany,  368 

Albert  of  Brandenburg,  Prince,  290 
Alexander   the   Great,   42,   66,    105, 

157,  277 

Alexandria    142,    230 
Almighty  God,   Creator  of  Heaven 

and  Hell,  256  et  seq.    See  also 

Elohim,  Jehovah. 
Alpheus,    82 
Al   Medina,  274 
Alva.  Duke  of,  300 
Amelek,   102,   106 
Amecica ;    IQ  ;    in    relation    to   land 

monopoly,    133;    143 
Amsterdam,  377 
Anabaptist    movement,    309 
Anastasius,  242,  243 
Ancestry:    origin    of,    worship,    13 

et  seq. 
Andrews,    Bishop,    quoted,    144 


"Annals,"  Tacitus,  quoted,  168,  169 

Anne,  Queen,  44,  52 

Anthony,  St.,  of  Padua,  280 

Antioch :  203 ;  filthiness  of  civil- 
ized, 214;  230 

Antwerp,  230 

Anubis,    161 

Aphrodite :  goddess  of  desire,  59- 
65;  67.  See  also  Venus 

Apollo :  the  god  of  the  explicit  rea- 
son, 54  et  seq.;  78,  80,  81,  92. 
See  also  Phoebus. 

Aquinas,  St.  Thomas:  xvii,  note; 
154 

Arbela,  66 

Ares :  51,  62 ;  the  god  of  war,  65 
et  seq.  See  also  Mars. 

Arethusa,   82 

Aristotle,   160 

Arius  the  Libyan,  241 

Arnaud,  314 

Arnold,  Matthew :  quoted,  176 : 
cited,  180 

Artemis:   virginity  of,  52;   258 

Aryans:  xvii;  2;  marital  condi- 
tions of  ancient,  5  et  seq.;  25, 
28,  30,  31-38,  41,  47,  77,  78,  81 
et  seq.,  87  et  seq.,  133,  153 

Asclepios,  55 

Asia,   25 

Askew,  Anne,  261 

Astruc,  Jean :  discoverer  of  the 
two  Bible  stories  of  the  Crea- 
tion. i5i 

Athanasius,  241,  300 

Athena :  goddess  of  the  implicit 
reason,  49-53 ;  62,  67.  68.  ?T 

Athens:  43;  story  of  foundation 
of,  49  et  seq.;  82,  83,  98,  1^7. 
172 

Augsburg   confession,    306 


397 


398 


INDEX 


Augustine,  St.:  "De  Civitate  Dei," 
cited,  252;  253,  255,  256;  atta- 
tude  of,  toward  Hebrew 
Scriptures,  256  et  seq.;  258; 
divine  scheme  of,  259;  Christus 
and,  263  et  seq.;  271  et  seq.; 
306 

Augustus:  Age  of,  158  et  seq.;  162, 
297 

Babylon;  108:  and  the  Jewish  cap- 
tivity, 139  et  seq.;  240 

Balzac.  Honore  de,  cited  on  the 
Absolute,  236 

Bargain    God,   The,    112-116 

Bathsheba,   130 

Beersheba,   114 

Beethoven.   193 

Bene-Israel :  war  God  of.  104  et 
seq.  See.  also  Hebrews,  Is- 
raelites, Jews. 

Brnjamin,    131 

Bernard,    St.,   81 

Berthier.    Marshal,    183 

Betbanv.   178 

Bethsaida.  TOO 

Bible :  myths  of  the,  ro.s :  auto- 
biographical character  of,  108. 
TOO:  quoted  on  God's  contract 
•with  Jacob.  114  115:  Solo- 
mon's contributions  to.  130: 
study  of.  Hymn  of  Creation, 
i"o  ft  sea.:  Protestant  inter- 
pretation of,  308.  309.  325 

Bombay.    377 

Bonaparte.  199,  See  also  Napo- 
leon. 

Boncompagni,  Ugo  (Gregory  VIT1") 
2Q3 

Boniface  VIII.  288,  374 

Book.   God   of  the.   139-144 

Borgia,   Rodrigo    (Alexander    VT\ 

2Q2 

Borodino,  67 

Bourbon,  Constable.  293 

Bozrah,    148 

British    Museum.    283 

"Brother  Copas,"  A  Quiller-Couch, 

quoted,  283 
Brown.   John,   106,  197 
Bnmelleschi,    xiii 
Bruno.  Giordano,  29,  261 
Brutus,   196 


Buffalo,  332 

Bull,     Bishop,     "Man     Before    the 

Fall,"   331 
Buddha,    21 

Burke,  Edmund;   14;  cited,  150 
Burns,  De  Lisle,  315 
Burns,  Robert,  349;  quoted,  350 
Byron,       Lord;       "The       Giaour," 

quoted,    74 ;   quoted,   75 
Byzantium,    259.      See    also    Con- 
stantinople. 
Caesar:   42,   51,  66,   67.   91,   92,   94, 

105,    107,     112;    absolutism    of 

the,   158  et  seq.;    168,   196,  238; 

the    celestial.    251    et   seq.    See 

also    Divus    Caesar. 
Cassarea-Phillipi,   186 
Caligula.   163 
Callixtus.  St.,  219 
Calvin.  John :    character    study   of, 

306,  307:  308  et  seq. 
Cambio.  Arnolfo   di,  xiii 
Canaanites.  106,  129,  135 
Canossa,   276 
Capernaum  190 
Capua.  218 

Carlyle,   Thomas,   quoted.    -?oo 
Carter.    Professor.    "The    Religious 

Life       of       Ancient       Rome," 

quoted.   88 
Carthage.  253,  343 
Cassius,   Cains.    196.   258 
Catacombs.  218  et  seq. 
Catholics  xiv,  7,  80 
Catholicism,   crystallization    of.   311 

et  seq. 
Cavour,  271 

Cephus,   182.     Sec  also   Peter. 
Chaeronea,   157 
Chalcedon,  Council  of.  243 
Chaldees,    in 
Charles    I,    308 
Charles    Martel,    275 
Charles  V,  297.  298,  299 
Chastity:      early     enforcement     of 

marital,  6  et  seq. 
Chavannes,    Puvis    de,    284 
Children :    early   attitude   toward,   2 

ct  seq. 

China,   19.  319 

Chislere,    Michele     (Pius    V).    293 
Christ:    21,   149;   opens  war   in   the 

synagogue,   198,   199;   298.     See 


INDEX 


399 


also    Christus,    God,    Humanus, 
Jesus,   Joshua    ben   Joseph. 

"Christian  Antiquities,"  Cardinal 
Pelliccia,  quoted,  295 

Christians:  45,  153;  Nero  and  the 
early,  167  et  seq.;  faith  of,  in 
resurrection,  172  et  seq.;  pri- 
mitiveness  of  early,  192  et  seq.; 
distinction  between  early,  and 
the  Jews,  202  et  seq.;  257,  258, 
259;  minor  gods  of  the,  278 
et  seq.;  360 

"Christianity,"  Henry  Holt  Mill- 
man,  cited,  209 

Christus :  the  God,  167  ct  seq.;  ob- 
scurity of  origin  of,  1693 
youth  of,  170;  War  God  of 
spiritual  Israel,  198  et  seq.; 
tent  God  of  spiritual  Israel, 
202  et  seq.;  son -of  Jehovah 
the  Righteous,  208  et  seq.;  re- 
volutionary spirit  of,  210  et 
seq.;  growth  of  power  of,  227 
et  seq.;  son  of  the  Absolute, 
seq.;  early  worship  of,  222  et 
seq.;  growth  of  power  of,  227 
237-248;  263  et  seq.;  eclipse  of, 
271-277.  See  also  Absolute, 
Christ,  God,  Humanus,  Jesus, 
Joshua  ben  josepn. 

Chronos :  god  of  time,  31-35,  36, 
76,  81,  89  et  seq. 

Chrysostom,    St.  John,   272 

Church:  organization  of  the  early, 
202  et  seq.;  cause  of  institu- 
tion of  Christian,  213  et  seq.; 
worship  of  Christus  in  the  pri- 
mitive 218  et  seq.;  the,  and  the 
Sonship  of  Jesus  discussed,  240 
et  seq. 

Cicero :  14,  92 ;  quoted  on  Roman 
religion,  93  City :  genesis  of 
the.  State,  12  et  seq. 

Civil   War,  196 

Claudius,    Emperor,    163 

Clement    XI,    xvii,    nofe 

Colonna,  Cardinal   (Martin  V),  306 

Columbus,    Christopher,    297,    377 

Constance,   Council  of,  305,  306 

Constantine,    Emperor.    259 

Constantinople,  242,  243,  259.  See 
also  Byzantium. 

Copernicus,    Nicholas:    320;    astro- 


nomical   system    of,    321,    322, 
326 

Cos&a,  Bartholomew  (John  XXIII)* 
292 

Creationism:    evolution    of,    1 12    et 

seq. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  283,  308 
Cudworth,    Ralph,    quoted    on    the 

Absolute,  235 

"Cults  of  the  Greek  States,"  L.  R. 

Farnell,  quoted,  46;   cited,  53; 

quoted,  79 
Cupid,   62 
Cuvier,    329 

Cyprian,   Bishop  of  Carthage:    'De 
Catholicse   .Ecolesia;    Unitate," 

253    et   seq. 
Cyril  of  Alexandria,  242 

D'Ailly,    Peter,   xvii,   note 
Daniel,    262 

Dante:    "Inferno,"    cited,    77;    154 
Darwin,  Charles,  330 
Darwin,    Erasmus,   329 
David:    attitude    of    humanity    to- 
ward, 105;  127;  career  of,  129, 

130;    the    poet,    146;    148,    183, 

237 
"De    Catholicae    Ecclesiae    Unitate," 

Cyprian,  cited,  253,  254 
"De   Civitate   Dei,"   St.  Augustine ; 

cited,    258;    on    hell,    261;    271 

et  seq. 
Delos,  54 

Decius,    Emperor,    253 
Delos,    54 
Delphi,    83 
Demeter,    the    mother    of    sorrows, 

68-72 

"Dies    Ira?,"   374 
Divtis  Caesar,   160  et  seq.;  210,  221, 

238.    See  also  Caesar. 
Dionysius,  43 

Dionysus,    god    of    madness,    77-81 
Doane,    Bishop    William    Croswell, 

.168 

Doeg,    105 
Doellinger,    314 
Domitian ;      attitude      of,      toward 

Christians,   209 
Dyaus,  36  et  seq.,  53 


400 


INDEX 


Eden,  Garden  of,  19,  20,  108 

Edom,   148 

Egmont,  299 

Egypt:  55J   108;  Jews  in,   117-121; 

religion  of,   118  et  seq. 
Eleusis,   71 
Elijah,  135,  170,  350 
Elizabeth,   Queen   52 
Elohim :  defined,  152  327.  See  also 

God  Jehovah. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo ;  197 ; 
quoted,  385 

Emmaus,   178,  182 
England:    15   22    112,    126:    in    re- 
lation to   land   monopoly,   133 
Ephesus,  Council  of,  242  et  seq. 
Ephraim,  125 
Epictetus,  46 
Esau,  114 
Etruscans,  89 
Euphrates,  132 
Europa,  47 
Europe,  19,  25,  67,  143 

Family;  evolution  of  institution  of, 
2  et  seq.;  early  relation  of, 
to  land,  13  et  seq.;  relation  of 
hearth  to,  16  et  seq. ;  influences 
at  war  on  integrity  of,  21,  22 

Farnell,  L.  R.,  "Cults  of  the  Greek 
States,"  quoted,  46;  cited  on 
name  of  Athens,  53 ;  quoted 
on  cult  of  Dionysus,  79 

Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  297 

Fire:  attitude  of  archaic  man  to- 
ward, 16  et  seq.  • 

Fiske,  John :  cited  on  human  pro- 
gress 352 

Florence,  xiii,  xiv 

France:     38;     during    the    Terror, 

262,  300 
Francis  I,  297 
Francis,  St.,  21,  81 
Frazer,      J.      G.,      "The      Golden 

Bough,"   quoted,   69 
Franks,  271,  275 
Frederick,   Elector  of   Saxony,   296 

Galilee,  170,  179,  183,  202 
Galileo,   321,   326 
Callus,  Emperor,  253 


Gama,  Vasco  da  Gana,  377 

Gaul,  67 

Gea,  28  et  seq.,  35 

Gengis,  Khan,  67,  277 

Genneraret,  Lake,  179 

Germans,    51,    271 

Germany,  298 

Gerson,  Jehan,  xvii,  note 

Ghiberti,  xiii 

"Giaour,    The,"    Byron,    quoted,   74 

Gilboa,  190 

Giotto,  xiii 

Glasgow,   285 

God :  of  the  Trinity,  xviii ;  of  the 
house,  i  et  seq.;  19,  20;  of 
time,  31-35;  of  explicit  reason, 
54' et  seq.;  of  war,  65  et  seq.; 
of  madness,  77-81 ;  friend,  of 
Abraham,  108  et  seq.;  of  the 
book,  139-144;  the,  Christus, 
167  et  seq.;  Humanus,  349-359. 
See  also  Christ,  Christus,  Elo- 
him, Jehovah,  Zeus. 

Goden,  See  Woden. 

"Golden  Bough,  The,"  J.  G.  Frazer, 
quoted  69 

Goths,  251,  252 

Government:    essence  of,    125,    126 

Granada,  275 

Grant,  U.  S.,  183 

Greece;  34,  65,  66,  112;  literature 
of,  144,  145 

Greek  Dialectic :  Gods  of  the,  227- 
248 

Greeks:  xvii,  4,  14;  gods  of  the, 
26  et  seq.;  36,  53,  54,;  attitude 
of,  toward  intellectual  clarity, 
58,  67,  81,  et  seq.,  104  157  et  seq., 
158;  in  relation  to  language, 
234,  244 

Gregory  VII,  276,  312 

Gregory    XV,    xvii,   note 

Gustavus  Adolphus,  209 


Hades,  36,  69  et  seq.,  73-77 

Hainault,    300 

Hale,  Chief  Justice,  quoted,   126 

Hall,  Father,  quoted,  146,  147 

Hamlet  106 

Hannibal,  92 

Haran,   114 


INDEX 


Haroun  al  Raschid,  235 

Hearn,      Dr.       William      Edward, 

quoted  5 
Hebrews :    xvii ;    character    of    the 

literature   of   the,   145   et  seq.; . 

gods  of  the,  97-163.     See  also 

Bene-lsrael,  Israelites,  Jews. 
Heliogabalus,  208 
Helios,   55 
Hell:    birth    of    the    Christian,   258 

et  seq. 

Henry  VIII.  261,  293,  297 
Henry  of  Navarre,  300 
Hephaiston,   63,   67 
Hera,   36,  47,  54,  62 
Herod,   171 

Hezekiah;    132,   257,   quoted,   258 
Hindoos,  25 
"History  of  the  Aryan  Household," 

Dr.    William      Edward    Hearn, 

quoted,  5 

"History     of     Germany,"      Menzel, 

quoted,   298,   299 
Holland,  300 
Homer :  42 ;  quoted  on  Zenus,  45 ; 

58,  144,  160,  316 
Horeb,  135 
Horn,  299 
Horus,  118 
House-Father,  5-10,   n,   12,   13,   17, 

22,  38,  43,  91 
House-Mother,  7,   17 
"Human  Personality,"  Myers,  cited 

on  psychical  projection,  194 
Humanus:   the  God,  349-359 
Hutton,  326 
Hypatia,  242,  261 
Hymn  of  Creation,  Bible;  study  of 

the,   150  et  seq. 

Incas,  297 

India,   19,  53 

Indus,  157 

"Inferno,"  Dante,  cited,  77 

Innocent  III,  312 

Innocent  VIII,  xvii,  note 

"Institutes  of  the  Christian  Reli- 
gion," Calvin,  307 

"Intellectual  System  of  the  Uni- 
verse," Ralph  Cudworth, 
quoted  235 

Isaac,   101,   119 


Isaiah,    131    et    seq.;    quoted,    134, 

135,   141,  252,  265 
Isis,  118  161,  208 
Israelites,    100    et    seq.      See    also 

Bene-lsrael,    Hebrews,    Jtws. 
Issus,  66 

Italy  xviii  34,  87,  252 
Jvry,  300 

Jacob:  100,  101,  103;  the  Bargain 
God  of,  112  et  seq.;  business 
instinct  of,  115,  no,  120;  135, 
161,  341 

James,  St.,  175,  237 

James,  Professor  William;  brush 
of,  with  Josiah  Royce  over 
the  Absolute,  230  et  seq.;  opin- 
ion of,  on  the  Absolute,  247; 
266 

Jehovah:  45,  104;  role  of,  in  the 
religious  drama,  106  et  seq.;  in 
relation  to  sex,  106  et  seq.; 
the  friend  God  of  Abraham, 
jo8-ui;  and  creationism,  112 
et  seq.;  God  of  the  working 
class,  117-121;  the  tent  God  of 
Israel,  123-128;  the  Righteous, 
128-134;  the  Holy,  134-138; 
God  of  the  book,  139-144;  god 
of  inspiration,  144-149;  Creator 
of  Heaven  and  iiarth,  150-154; 
160,  161,  162;  Father  of 
Christus,  198;  and  Zeus  com- 
pared, 228;  identification  of, 
with  the  Absolute  of  Plato, 
228,  229;  234,  237,  252,  260,  327, 

341,   344 

Jereboam,  131 

Jeremiah,    146,   149 

Jericho,  288 

Jerusalem,  26,  130,  132,  134-136, 
passim;  fall  of,  139  et  seq.; 
146,  170,  177,  178,  182,  187,  247 

"Jerusalem  the   Golden"  374 

Jesuits:  and  the  deification  of  the 
Virgin,  294;  Molinos  and  the, 
313 

Jesus :  xviii,  note ;  104 ;  attitude  of 
humanity  toward,  105;  128, 
133 :  and  the  Resurrection,  172 
et  seq.;  Mary  Magdalen  and 
the  resurrection  of,  175  et 
seq.;  19,  219  et  seq.;  237;  deva- 


402  INDEX 

tion  ui,  to  divinity,  242  et  seq., 
ijt.  Augustine's  conception  01, 
-a»3  ei  seq.;  207;  genius  ol,  277; 
tiie  God  ot  uie  Market,  339 
et  seq.;  344,  348  356:  and 
Christianity,  366  et  seq.;  371, 
3»i,  384.  See  also  Christ, 
Christus,  Joshua  ben  Joseph. 

Jethro:  and  Moses,  256  et  seq. 

Jews:  gods  of  the,  97-163;  Disper- 
sion of  the,  142  et  seq.; 
sacred  writings  of  the,  142, 
143;  Christ's  mission  to  the, 
187;  difference  between,  and 
early  Christians,  202  et  seq.; 
warlike  nature  of  the,  209; 
separation  of  Christ  from 
identification  with  the,  228  et 
seq.;  256  et  seq.,  327,  359. 
See  also  Bene-lsrael,  Hebrews, 
Israelites. 

Job,    quoted,   349 

John   of   Antioch,   243 

John  XXIII,  306 

John,  St.;  the  penman  of  God,  108; 
interpretation  of  Jesus  by, 
1.78;  on  the  Resurrection,  179, 
202,  237 

John  the  Baptist,  138,  170  et  seq., 
172,  183,  184 

Joseph:  xiv  et  seq.;  170,  211,  237; 
comes  to  his  own,  291 ;  295, 
339,  348,  384 

Joshua:  106:  as  a  leader,  129;  211, 
287 

Joshua  ben  Joseph,  170,  276.  See 
also  Christ,  Christus,  Jesus. 

Jotham,  132 


Judah,  130,  131 

Judea,  170,  202 

Jupiter,  39,  90,  251.  See  also 
Zeus 

Justin  Martyr:  cited  on  the  wor- 
ship of  Christus,  222 ;  relation 
of,  to  the  Christian  'religion, 
229,  230 

Juvenal :  cited  on  moral  depravity, 
214 

Kant,  32 

Keepers  of  the  Blood.     See  Manes. 
Keepers    of    the    Fire    and   of   the 
Store.     See    Penates. 


Keepers   of   the   Gate.     See   Lares. 
Kempis,     Thomas     a,     quoted     on 
duty  to  bod,  247 

Kepler,   321 
Khadijali,    274 
Knox,    J  ohn,   294 
Kodesh,  Jehovah,   134-138 


Labor  :  early  application  of,  i  et 
seq.;  ancient  slave,  98:  Moses, 
the  first,  leader,  119,  120; 
trouble  with  modern,  move- 
ment, 121 

Landholder  :     development    of    the, 

3    et  seq. 

Lares,  xvii,  4,  10-16,  21,  22 
Latins,  4,  25,  67,  See  also  Romans. 
Lawrence   St.  222 
Lazarus,  243 

League  of  Nations,  383,  384 
Lebanon,   110 
Leda,  47 
Leo  I,  310 

Leo  X,  44,  289  et  seq.,  292,  317 
Leto,  54 

"Lettres   Provinciates,"   Pascal,   314 
Levites,  125,  130,  131 
Lincoln,  128,  196,  197 
Linnaeus,  329 
Lisbon,  377 
Li  via,    162 

Lloyd  George,   David,  336,  note 
Locke,  John,  32 
Loisy,  Pere,  315 
London,  343,  344,   377 
Louis  XIV,  42,  44,  60 
Lucifer,  260 
Luke,    St.  :    quoted    on    the   Athen- 

ians  82  ;    on   the   Resurrection, 

177,   178,  179 
Luther,     Martin;     on    indulgences, 

291  ;  opens  conflict  of   freedom 

against   authority,  296   et  seq.; 

305 
Lyell,     "Principles     of     Geology," 

quoted,    325 

Macaulay,  quoted,  90 
Macedon,  157 

Mahomet  :  career  of,  273  et  seq., 
307 


INDEX 


403 


Magdalene.  Mary:  the,  tradition 
of  the  Resurrection,  175  et  seq.; 
193,  194,  195 

McCabe,  Joseph,  315 

Maintenon,  Madame  de,  42 

Mamre,   no 

Man:  marital  virtue  of,  6-10;  su- 
premacy of  archaic,  18  et  seq.; 
relation  of  man  toward  lower 
animals,  25  et  seq.;  the  god- 
needs  of,  106-111;  archaic 
thought  on  origin  of,  112  et 
seq.;  the  making  of,  326  et 
seq. 

Manasseh,    125 

Manes,  xvii,  4,  6  et  seq.;  15,  21, 
22 

Marcus  Aurelius:  97;  attitude  of, 
toward  Christians,  209 

Marduk,  240 

Mark,  St:  175;  on  the  Resurrec- 
tion, 175,  176;  177,  179,  181 

Marriage :  evolution  of,  institu- 
tion, 2  et  seq. 

Mars,   106.     See  also  Ares. 

Mary,  Virgin:  170,  175,  237,  238, 
242.  Goddess  of  consolation, 
278-284 

Massacre  of  St.   Bartholomew,  300 

Matthew,  St. :  on  the  Resurrection, 
176  177;  179 

Mayence,  290 

Mayflower,  112,  308 

"Measure  for  Measure,"  Shak- 
speare,  quoted,  75 

Mecca.   273,   274 

Medici,  Giovanni  de  (Leo  X),  289 
et  seq.,  292,  317 

Medici,  Lorenzo  de.  42,  289 

Medici,  Gulio  de  (Clement  VII), 
293 

Mediterranean:  87,   143,   158,  251 

Menzel,  "History  of  Germany," 
quoted,  298,  299 

Mercury,  344 
Mesopotamia,   100 
Mexico :    and   land   monopoly,    133 
Micah :    141,   265,  quoted,  267 
Michaelangelo,   xiii,  284 
Milan :  cathedral,  283 


Mill,  John  Stuart,  336 

Millman,    Henry   Hart,   cited,   209 

Miltiades,  66 

Milton,  John:  "Paradise  Lost," 
cited,  77;  154 

Minerva.     See  Athena. 

Mithra,    161 

Moah,    102,   106 

Modernists,  315 

Molinos,  313 

Monks :  Christianity  and  the,  272 
et  seq. 

Montezumas,  297 

Moore,  297 

Moscow,  384 

Moses :  attitude  of  humanity  to- 
ward, 105;  the  penman  of 
God.  108;  in  Egypt,  II&-I22: 
activities  of,  in  the  Wilder- 
ness, 123  et  seq.;  estimate  of, 
129:  the  lawgiver,  371 

Mount    Ida,    36 

Miiller,    Max,    cited,    53 

Munich,   314 

Murillo,   294 

Music:    interpretation    of,    56.    57 

"Mythology  of  Greece  and  Rome," 
Fairbanks,  quoted,  58,  59 

Myths :  reliability  of  religious,  104 
et  seq. 

Naples,  344 

Napoleon:  38,  42.  105;  quoted,  149: 
cited,  169;  183;  quoted,  199 

Nazareth,  170,  202 

Nebat,    131 

Nebuazar-Adan.  139 

Negroes:  12;  slavery  of,  205 

Neptune.   324.      See  also   Poseidon. 

Nero,    Claudius,    162 

Nero,  163,  167.  209 

"New  Basis  of  Civilization,"  Pro- 
fessor Simon  Patton,  335 

New  York  332,  344 

Nestorius,  242,  243 

Netherlands,  208,  308 

Newman,  Cardinal.  154.  285  384 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  322 

Nicean  theology,  243  et  seq. 

Octavianus    Caesar,    158.     See   also 

Augustus. 
Odoacer,  271 


4»4  INDEX 

"Old    Testament    Theology,"    Her- 
mann      Schultz,      quoted      on 
myths,    loS 
Olympus:  29;  gods  of,  40  et  seq.; 

76 
Ovid:  cited  on   moral  uncleanness, 

214 

Osiris,   118 

Ouranos,  25  et  seq.  See  also 
Uranus 

Pagans:  defined,  258 

Pantheon,  168 

"Paradise   Lost,"    Milton,   cited,   77 

Paris,  300,  384 

Pascal,  Blaise:  "Lettres  Provin- 
ciales,"  314 

Pater,  Walter;  quoted  on  Roman 
religion,  93 

Patton,  Professor  Simon,  "New 
Basis  of  Civilization,"  cited, 
335 

Paul,  St. :  quoted  on  marital  chas- 
tity, 9;  on  intoxication,  80; 
149;  154;  and  the  Resurrection, 
172  ft  seq.;  attitude  of,  to- 
ward the  Resurrection,  181 
182;  psychological  manifesta- 
tion of  Jesus  to,  193 ;  influence 
of,  upon  spread  of  Christian 
religion,  228  et  seq.:  and  the 
wrath  of  God,  265  et  seq. 

Pekin,  384 

Pelliccia,  "Christian  Antiquities," 
quoted  on  Protestants,  295 

Penates,  xvii,  4.    16-19,  21,  22 

Peretti,  Feleci   (Sixtus  V),  293 

Pericles,  46 

Persephone,  69   et  seq.,   76 

Persia,  25.  27,   161 

Persians,  67 

Peter.  St. :  the  Resurrection  tradi- 
tion of,  181  et  seq.:  the  char- 
acter of,  182  et  seq.:  relation 
of,  to  Jesus'  Messiahship,  184 
ft  seq.:  denial  of  Jesus  by,  187 
et  sen.:  flight  of.  after  the 
Crucifixion,  189  et  seq.;  re- 
turn of,  to  Jerusalem,  191,  192; 
194,  195,  202,  229,  237  255 

Pharaoh :  attitude  of  toward  the 
Jews,  117;  relations  of  Moses 
and,  118  et  seq. 


Pharsalus,  92,   157,   196 

Pheidias,  46 

Philip  II,  299,  300 

Philip  IV  of  France,  374 

Philistines,    129 

Phillipi,  196 

Phoebus  Apollo ;  64-59 

Phanicians,   140 

Pilgrim  Fathers,  308 

Pindar,   189 

Pius  IX,  xvii,  note;  294,  314 

Piux  X,  315 

Plato:  43,  46,  58,  66,  83,   149.  228, 

229,     230;     the     word-juggler, 

234;   235,   236,   241,   246,   266 
Playfair,  326 
Pliny  the   Younger,   cited   on   early 

Christians.  209 

Pluto,  324.     See  also   Hades. 
Politics:  and  the  family,  21,  22 
Pompey.  92 
Pope:    The:    exaltation    of   276   ft 

seq.;   208,  305,   311;   power  of, 

312 

Poseidon,  36.  49.  5o,  81 
Port-Royalists.    314 
Prometheus.   42 
Propertv:    religions    origin    of    sa- 

credness  of,  TO  et  seq. 
Protestantism :    Growth    o>f.    206    ft 

sen. :  disruption  of,  305  et  seq. 
Prussia.  208 

Ptolemv.   160.  310.  320,  322 
Punic  Wars,  or.  92 
TMVioeroras.   58 
Pvthon.   ^4 
Quiltpr-Coitch.     A       T..     "Rrother 

Conas,"  mioted,  282.  283 
Quintilian,    160 

Rameses,  238 

Raphael.   345 

Rawlins.    General.    183 

Red  Sea.   120,  308 

Reformation,  xv,  296  et  seq.,  305 
et  seq..  311.  312,  379.  380 

Rehoboam,   131 

"Religious  Life  of  Ancient 
Rome,"  Carter,  quoted,  88 

Renaissance,  xiii.  280,  200.  345 

Renan  Ernest,  "Origins  of  Christ- 
ianity," quoted  on  the  Resur- 
rection, 180 


Resurrection  :  Jesus  and  the,  172  el 
seq.,  psychic  phenomena  of  the, 
of  the  dead,  173-197 

Rhea,  68 

Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  275 

Robespierre,  262 

Romans ;  xvii ;  in  war,  65,  66 ;  the 
god  of  the,  87-94;  104;  157  et 
seq. 

Rome:  14,  39,  46,  65,  66,  90,  91, 
loo,  112,  142;  supremacy  of, 
157  et  seq.;  the  early  Christ- 
ians in,  167  et  seq.;  ijl,  196; 
persecution  of  Christians  in, 
208  et  seq.;  depravity  of  ci- 
vilized, 214;  218  et  seq.;  251; 
in  days  of  St.  Augustine,  259, 
260,  268,  271 

Royce,  Josiah:  brush  of  with  Pro- 
fessor James,  230  et  seq. 

Russia,   126,  275 

Ruth,    149 


Saint    Roche;    Paris,   xv 

Saint  Maur,  280 

Saladin,  275 

Salamis,  67 

Salome,   175 

Samaria,  171 

Samuel,   127,   129 

Samson,   109 

Sancho,  King  of  Aragon,  319 

Santa  Maria  del  Fiore,  xiii 

Saracens,  275 

Satan,  76,  77 

Saturn,  251 

Saul:  127;  estimate  of,  129 

Saul  of  Tarsus,  228.    See  also  Paul 

Savonarola,  Fra  Girolamo,   xiv 

Saxons,  275 

Schultz,  Hermann,  "Old  Testament 
Theology,"  quoted  on  myths, 
105 

Science:  conflict  of,  and  religion, 
113  et  seq. 

Scipio,  Publius,  92 

Scott,  Dred,  133 

Scott,   Walter,   285 

Scotus,  154 

Second  Coming  of  Christ,  374  et 
seq.,  381 

Seeley,  Professor ;  cited  on  Na- 
poleon, 199 

Se  janus,  162 


INDEX  405 

Shakspeare;    quoted   on   death,   75; 

145 

Sidomans,  129 
Silas,  149 

Sixtus  II,  218  et  seq. 
Sixtus  XII,  xvii,  note 
Slaves,  3  ct  seq. 
Smith,  Goldwyn,   cited   on   Romans 

in  war,  65,  66 
Smith,     Sir     William,     quoted     on 

Apollo,    55 
Socrates,  58,  66 
Solomon;   127;  Sketch  of  reign  of, 

130,    131 
Sophocles,    149 
Spain,  296-300,  passim;  308 
Sparta,  82,  83,  98,  157 
Speech:  origin  of,  231   et  seq. 
State :    origin    of    the,    12    et   seq.; 

effect   of,  upon   the   family,  21, 

22 

St.     George-Mivart :     xviii,     note; 

quoted    on    Christ's    paternity, 

296 
St.      Paul's      without      the      Gates, 

Rome,  224 

St.  Peter's,  xiii,  224,  287 
St.   Sylvester's,    Rome,  218 
Suetonius ;      cited      on      depravity, 

214 

Sullivan,  Mr.,  315 
Switzerland :    Protestantism   in,   308 
Syracuse,  43 

Syria,    xvii,    55,    92,    100,    IO2,    ill, 
117,   139,   236,  281 


Tacitus,  Cornelius:  97;  cited  on 
depravity  of  civilization,  214; 
quoted  on  Nero  in  relation  to 
the  Christians,  168,  169 

Temple:  God  of  the,  134-138 

Tent  God  of  Israel,   123-128 

Tetzel,  291 

Teutons,  67,  68 

Thames,  93 

Thapsus,  196 

Thebes,  157 

Themistocles,   66 

Theocritus,  145,  146 

Theodosius,  242 

Thomas,   St.,  280 

Tiber,  87,  171 


INDEX 


Tiberius   Csesar,   93,    162 
Titans,  35 

Trajan,  91,   168,  209 
Trent,  Council  of,  311 
Trinity :  xvii ;   104,  the  second  per- 
son in  the,  278  ft  seq. 
Troy,   51 
Tyre,   343 
Tyrrell  Father,  315 

Unitarians,  80,  307 

United  States :  Protestantism  in  the 

310,    311    Ur,    ii 
Uranus,  31,  35,  Si,  89,  45,  244.    See 

also   Ouranos. 
Uriah,   130 
Uzziah,    131,    132 
Valentinian,    242 
Valerian,  222 
Valhalla,  68 
Vandals,  271 
Varuna,  25  et  seq.,  36 
Vatican,  287 

Venice,  343 

Venus,  112,  161,  251.  See  also  Aph- 
rodite. 

Vergil,   145,   146 

Victor   Emmanuel  I,  271 

Victoria,   Queen,   52 

Vinci,  Leonardo  da,  64 

Virgin  Mary,  xv,  xvi,  xvii,  52,  104. 
See  also  Mary. 

Wallace,  320 

War  God  of  Bene  Israel,  104  et 
seq.,  227 


Washington,  105 
Webster,  Daniel,  79 
Westphalia,   Treaty   of,  298 
Whistler,  James  McN.,  232 
William  the  Conqueror,   112 
William  the  Silent,  299,  300 
Wittenberg,   291,   296 
VVoden,  68,  106 
Working   Class,    God   of   the,    117- 

121,  227 

Woman;  early  status  of,  1-5; 
modern,  9;  and  •marital  chastity, 
6-ip;  archaic,  18,19;  and  se- 
lection of  mate,  60  et  seq.; 
debt  of  civilization  to,  68; 
right  of,  in  her  children,  70, 
71  ;  in  relation  to  industry,  71, 
72;  status  of,  in  early  church, 
205  et  seq. 

Yathrib,  274 

Yohanan.     See   John    the    Baptist. 

Yorkminster,  283,  287 

Zadek :    Jehovah,    133   et   seq.,    138 

Zeeland,    300 

Zeus:  god  of  the  city,  35-40;  42; 
twofold  destiny  of,  45-48;  54, 
65,  69,  76,  81,  82,  153;  morality 
of,  and  Jehovah  compared, 
228  et  seq.;  344 

Zin,  Desert  of,  171 
Zion,  127,  139 
Zuyder  Zee,  308 
Zwingli,  Huldreich,  30$ 


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